Ethical Dilemmas and Individual Cases

Image via Wikipedia

I just came across an interesting discussion about the cost of pet health care at a blog run by Liberty Mutual, the insurance company.  The blog is called The Responsibility Project, and the subtitle is "exploring what it means to do the right thing."  One of their staff writers, Kathy McManus, posted a piece a while back about how many pet owners spend large amounts of money in this area, and she posed the question, "When it comes to expensive veterinary medical care, is it more responsible to pay for a pet or perhaps give the money to charity instead?"

I teach rhetoric, and logic is an important component of that curriculum.  This question is posing what is called a "false dilemma," which is where you are offered only two choices of action in a situation when there are actually many possible choices.  Obviously, you could spend the money on anything, which would not necessarily be irresponsible.  However, her intention was to get followers of the blog to talk, and not, I hope, to suggest that it is irresponsible to spend your own money on caring for a pet who is wholly dependent on you for all of its needs.  Over 1600 people posted comments, some just a sentence of reaction, but a large number of them are very moving personal stories about animal companions and what had to be done to save their lives.

There is a horribly provocative essay by the notorious Peter Singer, "The Singer Solution to World Poverty," in which he looks at a number of scenarios that are all similar to the question McManus asks, with the telling difference of animal lives replaced by human ones.  Based on his other writings, I think we can probably assume that he does want people to take some action in this regard, but the main effect of the essay is to force readers to confront their own hypocrisy.  Oddly enough, the tenor of the responses to McManus's question is a rejection of any accusation of hypocrisy.  Many of the respondents noted their contributions to various charities, and virtually all feel no guilt over spending their money to save a pet's life.  Many of them also talk about the sacrifices -- not just in the financial sense, either -- they have made in order to save their pets, which I find encouraging. 

One point came up repeatedly:  you never know, going in, how much you will have to pay for your pet's healthcare.  What starts out as a small issue can slowly develop into a big-ticket crisis, so  insuring your pet for these situations helps you avoid a lot of these difficult decisions.  And the value of that relief can't be overestimated.
 

Related articles by Zemanta

• Liberty Mutual Announces Interactive Advertising in Time Magazine's History-making Debut iPad Issue (eon.businesswire.com)