In this universe, a hero…and in an alternate one? I wonder…
University of New Hampshire senior Cameron Lyle, a Division I college track and field competitor who excels in the shot put and hammer throw, has chosen to end his collegiate athletic career to save a stranger’s life.
He will donate his bone marrow today to a 28-year-old man suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Doctors told Lyle the man who will receive his marrow will live only six months without a transplant, and that there was a only one in five million chance for another non-family match. Yet the odds came up in his favor, thanks to Lyle having his mouth swabbed to join a bone marrow registry two years ago. He was a perfect match.
Lyle says he never hesitated in his choice, once he was informed. “It’s just a sport,” he said. “Just because it’s Division I college level doesn’t make it any more important. Life is a lot more important than that, so it was pretty easy…It was kind of a no-brainer for a decent human. I couldn’t imagine just waiting. He could have been waiting for years for a match. I’d hope that someone would donate to me if I needed it.”
“He made his decision. He gave up his college season to do this. He’s a gentle giant,” Lyle’s mother said of her 6-foot-2-inch, 255-pound son. “He’ll do anything for anybody.” Lyle’s coach Jim Boulanger, was also completely supportive, and, according to Lyle, came up with an instant Ethics Quote of the Month when the shot-putter told him of his plans.
“Here’s the deal,” Boulanger told Lyle. “You go to the conference and take 12 throws or you could give a man three or four more years of life. I don’t think there’s a big question here. This is not a moral dilemma. There’s only one answer.”
Yes, of course there is. Cameron Lyle is undoubtedly an Ethics Hero, and none of my following musings should diminish that. He has done a courageous, self-less and generous act at some significant personal sacrifice, and that is the essence of ethical conduct.
Still, I wonder.
The shot-put and hammer are unlikely to be careers for any athlete, and even for Olympic medal winners in those events, are seldom, if ever, tickets to fame and fortune. I wonder if Cameron’s mother and coach, had he been a potential Heisman trophy winner in football or a likely first round draft choice by the NBA in basketball, would have been so supportive. I wonder if he had been a female gymnast or ice skater that his parents had groomed her whole life for stardom and endorsement contracts, betting their family life and resources on her success, whether such a sacrifice would have been encouraged and admired.
And I wonder if Lyle, as an athlete facing not merely the premature end of a college track and field career, but the loss of a promising future as an elite, professional athlete and all the money and privilege that goes with it, would still feel that his choice was obvious and a “no-brainer.” It still would be, you know. A life saved outweighs even the chance to earn millions of dollars and a lifetime of fame….doesn’t it?
Yet I am confident that if Lyle were giving up all of that, and not just a few college meets, some powerful rationalizations would work their way into his calculations, like:
- This isn’t my fault. Why should I be the one who has to give up everything I’ve worked for to help someone I have never met?
- It’s not fair. I don’t deserve this. This is his misfortune; by what rule does it become mine to share?
- Nobody will blame me If I refuse.
- If they don’t keep looking for another donor, they’ll never find one.
- If it was just me, that would be one thing. But I’m not just hurting myself, I’m hurting my future wife, and kids, and their kids. The most ethical thing is not to trade all of their well-being, and mine, for just one unfortunate stranger.
- I have no right to throw away the hopes and dreams of everyone who has supported me in my career so far. I’ll leave it up to them.
- God wouldn’t have given me this talent to just throw it away.
With a little help from friends, coach and family, I bet Cameron might be persuaded through these lines of reasoning that the best thing to do is to look out for Number One. Maybe not…but maybe the Cameron Lyle who spent high school and college fawned over and spoiled and lauded as a basketball or football star wouldn’t have the same values and ethics as this Cameron Lyle. In fact, I’m sure of it.
He would have, instead, had his character molded by the warped priorities of big time team sports, and all of his family would have been immersed in that Bizarro World as well, the world of Penn State, among other murky places.
If so, in all likelihood, a 28-year-old man with acute lymphoblastic leukemia would be dead six months from now, and Cameron Lyle would be on the road to fame and riches, convinced, along with his family, that he had made the right choice, just as he is now.
Finally consider this hypothetical…
What if Cameron, rising, nationally-recognized college football star being scouted by the NFL, had been about to have his mouth swabbed two years ago, and a team mate had said, “Hey wait a minute, big fella! What it your marrow comes up a match for some poor schmuck with leukemia in a year or two, and only you can save him, but it will mean that you miss the NFL draft? That’s millions down the drain, bro! That means you marry Linda Graziano, who’s not bad but nothing you’d want to see in a fold-out, instead of a Victoria’s Secret model, or Kate Upton! It means you’re selling insurance, and your kids are in public school! Or, in the alternative, you let the guy die and everybody hates you. Don’t get on the registry, man! It’s not worth it”
So Cameron didn’t.
And that 28-year old whose life he is saving today dies in six months.
Is that any better, ethically, than not agreeing to the transplant? Is making sure you can’t do the right thing more ethical than not doing it?
__________________________
Pointers: Lianne Best; Fark
Facts and Graphic: ABC News
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
Can’t he get an extra year of eligibility from the NCAA on a medical exemption? Couldn’t a big time football prospect do the same? Don’t forget Pat Tillman passed up a lucrative NFL career to volunteer for the Army only to be killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.
I just wonder whether this is a great place to make your points. When posed next to real life and people, hypotheticals can make the habit of posing them and the person posing them seem mean.
I make my living posing hypotheticals, and I can’t be concerned with readers being irrational. What would be a better place to pose it? The situation faced by Cameron made me think about it for the first time.
Ouch. I guess agents who make their livings negotiating maximum contracts for their clients and poor mothers of highly sought after athletes make their livings from their childrens’ bonuses. So I suppose they can’t be concerned with ethicists being irrational. After all, everybody’s got to do their job.
Sorry, this is far too arch for me. What’s are you trying to say, in real English? Bottom line: Parents dependent on their child’s athletic income and success would be likely to try to discourage him from abandoning a lucrative path even to save someone’s life. Do you disagree, or just object to me pointing it out?
Why is this ending his career? Recovery time is 3-7 days from gving bone marrow.
My understanding is that lifting more than 20 pounds is out—recovery for day-to-day activities is different from recovery for extreme athletic pursuits. Which makes sense.
That and the fact that every operation I have ever has required 2-5 times the recovery time I was told about.
I donated in the past when i was working in a plumbing supply warehouse and i was lifting a lot more then 20 pounds and the doctor told me that i was no risk after about a week
Yeah, but look what happened to you.
I really have no idea. I presume he, the coach and the family isn’t making the whole thing up.
On the other hand, you’re right—I can find any source that suggests protracted recover issue. I also can’t find one that relates to athletic performance.
He’s a senior and the article says he was training for the conference championship next month. I’d guess the timing is just bad in that by the time he would be cleared to compete, the season would be over.
I’d take that bet. I bet he wouldn’t, he’d donate anyway. I say that without knowing thing one about the man, only that giving up something valuable, (not just in a monetary sense) but something that he’s worked years to achieve, was a no-brainer.
There are many hard moral and ethical dilemmas. This is not one of them.
It’s not so much that he’s an ethics hero – it’s that so many are ethically challenged, that he shines in comparison. He’s just an ordinary, decent human being. I know of no higher praise than that.
So to give a real-world counterexample: Kirk Cousins, recent Quarterback for Michigan State, was originally taking pre-med courses and planning on going to Med School following his antipated OK-but-nothing-special college football carreer. Instead he exploded out of nowhere and became one of the best QB’s in MSU history. Somewhere along the line he realized he would be able to go pro, so he dropped his pre-med and switched over to a simple major in order to better focus on training. He got picked up by the Redskins and played pretty well when their starting QB got hurt.
Now the question- by all accounts, he is extremely intelligent and was doing well in his classes, and looked to make a good Doctor. Is there anything unethical about him giving up his chance to help people for fame and fortune in the NFL? It’s certainly different than directly refusing to donate marrow, but it seems somewhat parallel to refusing to sign up on the registry. However, I’ve never heard of anybody being anything but congratulatory for his success- thoughts?
No. To say otherwise would be to argue that every smart student has an obligation to become a doctor, and every strong individual should become a fire fighter. In the hypothetical, we are talking about one, identifiable individual whose life hinges on a decision, not future, indeterminable potential patients who will probably be well-treated by someone else.
Right, which is why I don’t think it equates to refusing to donate when your’e a match. But what’s the difference between turning off a path of helping people, and not getting a cheek swab because the future cost of being found a match might be too high?
PS- I’m not disagreeing, I think Cousins’ decision is fine and avoiding the swab seems wrong, but I’m not sure WHY they’re different.
I thought about this one for a bit and came solidly down on the position that it would not have been unethical for him to say “No, I don’t want to donate at this time.” As a society, we are encouraged — but not reprimanded — about donating blood. The same policy applies to checking the organ donor box on our driver license applications. This is because we have decided that one’s decisions about health and body are absolute and should not be judged. The ultimate expression of this is a woman who decides to get an abortion. Obviously, the fetus (absent a medical issue) would be in a much better position if it were allowed to keep its residence for up to 9 months or so — but women are permitted to get an abortion because of the higher value placed on the life already in being. Your question reminded me of a true situation that happened to a family that I know. There are three adult siblings, but they are not close. The youngest sister required a kidney (due to a long history of diabetes AND prior drug abuse), and the other siblings declined to donate even though they were matches. She ended up having a transplant from another donor and is doing well. While I definitely would not have made the same decision as the siblings (I am also on the bone marrow registry and have checked the organ donor box on my driver’s license though), I cannot judge those siblings because they chose not to undergo a complicated medical procedure — even if it meant saving the life of their sister.
Boy, I can’t see this argument at all.
Your call is based partially on “everybody does it” and partly on inapplicable analogies. Not giving blood to a general blood bank is one thing—not giving blood when it is the only way to save the life of a specific individual is materially different, killing someone by non-feasance. It’s not illegal, but is is clearly unethical. WHO has “decided that one’s decisions about health and body are absolute and should not be judged”? That’s simply not true: that’s what the field of bioethics is about. We have to judge them. We have to judge all conduct.
The decision of those siblings to not donate at the risk of their sisters’ life is no less than monstrous–it’s indefensible. Unethical, selfish, a slam-dunk Golden Rule rejection, and nothing less.
I would make a different decision, you would make a different decision. Agreed. But it’s not for us to judge what others do with their bodies. If we start down that road, we could eventually live in a society where the State makes those decisions for us. When I signed up for the bone marrow registry, I decided that I wanted to be in the position to save a life of a stranger if possible. I remember very clearly when I did, because I was told that because I have such a generic background that I likely would never be called. What they really needed (at least at the time) were more Black donors and donors with an Eastern European background. Is it immoral for those groups not to be tested and become potential donors? Of course not.
But it’s not for us to judge what others do with their bodies. If we start down that road, we could eventually live in a society where the State makes those decisions for us.
Social judging is not the same as law determining something.
Socially, we judge Westboro Baptist Church, but that doesn’t lead to the government censoring everyone’s speech.
Heck, by your logic, you can’t say that Jack is wrong here.
I’m taking your “could eventually” wiggle words to suggest it’s likely. If we refrain from doing things because there’s any remote change of a bad outcome, then we couldn’t do ANYTHING. EVER.
Is it immoral for those groups not to be tested and become potential donors? Of course not.
Jack already pointed out that this wasn’t a valid comparison: “Not giving blood to a general blood bank is one thing—not giving blood when it is the only way to save the life of a specific individual is materially different, killing someone by non-feasance.”
Beth, for heaven’s sake. If you call “Refusing to donate a kidney to save the life of your sister” “doing something that can’t be judged with one’s body,” you might as well call refusing to run and get help when your brother falls down the well “dong something with your body,” because you have chosen not to move your legs.
When doing something with your body means life, death or other consequences for someone else, that thing you are doing/not doing is called rescue, or neglect, or cowardice, or murder, or any one of many other things. “Donating blood” involves one’s body, but it is not an activity that affects only the individual, and as such, it is in the realm of ethics, and a legitimate to either approve of or not. On the other hand, whether or not you trim your nose hair of get a tattoo has no ethical consequences at all.
These are rather basic distinctions, and you are being dangerously sloppy about them.
Maybe you’re right Jack about me being sloppy. But, you seem to read the moral dilemma as happening when it’s a specific “known” life at stake. I read it as happening earlier — e.g., you know lives potentially will be saved if you check the organ donor box on your driver’s application, so do you do it? If we don’t judge the latter, should we be judging the former? I think you would say yes. I also deliberately did not elaborate on the family circumstances I mentioned earlier to prove (well, at least attempt to prove) my point about judging others. The family in question is quite objectively awful — intra-family lawsuits, greed, betrayal, jealousy, forgery, theft, even an alleged murder attempt — and all between family members. Think Borgias (or Lannisters!) but set in modern day. Given this context, did the siblings make the right call in refusing the kidney donation? Also, does it make a difference that the sibling created the situation (at least partially) due to a prior heroin addiction? As an aside, congrats on such a though provoking post.
Big difference, Beth. While not giving blood isn’t generous or good citizenship, it is unlikely to kill anyone–when was the last time you heard about people in the US dying because they ran out of blood? It can happen, but it’s not likely, so the damage is speculative. Speculative damage is less of a consequence than actual damage–you risk speculative damage every time you drive a car.
“Given this context, did the siblings make the right call in refusing the kidney donation?” Yikes–you mean, is the fact that the person you let die an awful person a justification for doing so? Heck no. Talk about judgments we can’t make! And the same goes for “does it make a difference that the sibling created the situation (at least partially) due to a prior heroin addiction?”–Yes, it can make no difference. Are you more justified in withholding CPR when a fat man has a heart attack than when a fit man does? Surely not!
I talked about organ donorship in my last comment, which most assuredly saves lives. Blood donorship is different, but agreed there. As for your hypothetical, if the fat man stole my inheritance, sued me, and tried to kill me, perhaps I’d be morally justified in denying him CPR. If all he did was get obese, I’d give him CPR — no question. If he needed a kidney which involves invasive surgery, I still think it would be inappropriate for society to judge my decision — no matter what it was — because it is MY body.
Failing to donate organs, like failing to donate blood, is not necessarily a death sentence for anyone—it just reduces the available resources.
Are you really arguing that the fact that someone mistreated you justifies letting them die when you can save them? That’s revenge and retribution, not ethics.
Sure we can judge it. It’s your right, and you exercised it is a selfish, non-altruistic manner. If we can say the person who gave a kidney to stranger to save her life is generous, kind, courageous, selfless and ethical, wand we certainly can and should, then we can say that someone who didn’t, in this case, is none of those things. That’s a judgment, and an obvious conclusion. Of course we can make it.
Fair enough. But then you get to question many other medical decisions — abortion being the top of my list. In each circumstance, should we judge why the mother terminated the pregnancy? Was she poor, abused, a drug addict, too young, etc. — or was she just selfish and non-altruistic because maybe she was up for partner that year? In my way of looking at things, we shouldn’t judge why or why not someone makes this type of decision, because we don’t stand in that person’s shoes and it’s not our body. What’s fascinating about this discussion in my mind is that I think you and I would make the same decision in each circumstance. The only difference I see is that we disagree as to whether or not we should pass judgment on others who might make a different decision.
Abortion is easy. If the only individual involved is the woman and her body, then it’s her call. If we regard the unborn child as a human being with rights, its not just a decision involving her body, and requires balancing of rights, outcomes, and fairness. That’s why the abortion advocates have, successfully so far, removed the fetus from consideration.
You’re the first person that I’ve seen say that abortion is “easy” but I agree with you. But I think most abortion advocates take it a step further to say that even if that fetus is a human and has rights, the woman’s decision always trumps because that woman’s rights are superior to that of the fetus — regardless of that woman’s motive for wanting to terminate a pregnancy. I think that same analysis applies to a person’s decision to give (or not give) body parts to another human being in need.
Take a longer view than this life and see if it changes how you think.
The topic is not how I think, but how people make ethical decisions. Your comment is based on something other than ethics, indeed, a non-ethical consideration. There’s nothing virtuous about calculating that if you do the right thing in this life, you get to romp with 10,000 virgins in the next, or live in Candyland, or whatever the Golden Carrot is. That’s a quid pro quo deal, not kindness or generosity. Promises of a post-morten reward is a way to get essentially unethical people to do the right think anyway, because there’s something in it for them. It’s an effective system. But it has nothing to do with ethics.
I should have been more clear. It’s not about the rewards, but about the concept of eternal life. In the short time of a human lifetime being unethical, or sinful, or unworthy in a variety of ways has an end and the damage is contained.
But, if a person gets just a little bit more or less ethical, or good or moral over the course of eternity the result has to be increased or decreased. well being and a corresponding increase or decrease in the level of happiness for every soul.
The reward isn’t external it’s part of the person or soul. It can’t be separated from it. It’s not done for the reward, but because that is what you are. You cannot be less.
“Is making sure you can’t do the right thing more ethical than not doing it?”
That got me to thinking about decisions made long ago to proceed with development of atomic bombs, amid projections that using such bombs would end a war sooner and thus theoretically prevent greater losses to all.
Maybe that thinking is irrelevant, despite being about choices affecting loss of life or prevention of same. Still, it helps me to evaluate my own consideration of embracing asceticism as a form of protest and defiance against the evils of humans, their tribalism, and their governments.
Thanks for your piece. I found this after doing a search on Google. I had commented on a shared post on Facebook about this story. The FB share didn’t even mention what career Mr. Lyle was giving up but when I found out, I wondered what kind of lucrative career was being lost from a person not even in the running for and Olympic Gold medal in the shot put. I pointed out that what he was doing was great just like the thousands of other volunteers who donate each year. We just don’t hear about them because they weren’t potentially losing a career they probably never had.