Extreme Measures

If you were given the opportunity to find a cure for cancer, or perhaps a person's paralysis, would you kill another human being in order to find that cure? In the movie Extreme Measures, a medical researcher asks this question of a British doctor.

Dr. Lawrence Myrick is a well-known surgeon who is doing experimental surgery that could allow people that have spinal cord injuries to be able to walk again. His methods of performing this research include taking homeless people and people that he feels nobody will miss, and performing surgeries on them to find a cure for spinal cord injuries. Dr. Myrick decided that the means of taking a healthy homeless person and killing them by performing experiments on them justifies the end for finding a cure for quadriplegic paralysis. He justifies to himself that by being able to find a cure for quadriplegic paralysis there is no wrong in taking a completely healthy person and performing experimental surgery on them by cutting their spinal cord. He also feels justified in doing this because he is choosing homeless people to perform his surgeries on and their lives are not socially valued. The homeless people, in this situation, were considered less of being humans by their impairment of being homeless. By using a person merely as a means to an end is an example of a Kantian principle. Dr. Myrick is using healthy people as a means by trying to find a cure or end for paraplegic paralysis.

Dr. Luthan is a British doctor who is serving his residence in a hospital in New York. When a patient comes in who is completely naked, disoriented, and bears a hospital bracelet Dr. Luthan tries to help him. The doctor also noticed that there was a fresh surgical scar on the back of the man. Dr. Luthan performs different types of tests on him and can't figure out what seems to be wrong. Unfortunately the man dies not long after being admitted to the hospital. When Dr. Luthan tries to pull the records on the man he is told that the records no longer exist. The more he digs into this case, the more puzzling it gets and he starts to feel as though someone isn't telling him something. When his investigations lead him to TriPhase, the place where Dr. Myrick is performing his experimental research, he can't believe what he was seeing.

Dr. Luthan felt that people's lives were sacred, however impaired that person appeared to be. I believe he felt that each person should be able to make the choice of how they live and that choice should not affect them as being a human being. He felt that just because a person was homeless they should still be considered a person and they should able to