#psy. heinz dilemma.
“Should Heinz have stolen the drug?”
The Heinz dilemma is a frequently used example in many ethics and morality classes. One well-known version of the dilemma, used in Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, is stated as follows:[1]
A woman was on her deathbed. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s laboratory to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?
Preconventional stage: It depends on whether the person at this stage is primarily focused on reward or punishment. If a person focuses on the reward (in this case, a woman’s recovery from the disease is a reward), he will probably think: He should steal the drug. Stealing the drug is not really a bad thing. He is already tried to pay for the drug from the start, and the drug he stole is not $ 2,000; it is $ 200(!). If a person focuses on punishment (in this case, sanctions according to the law after a theft is punishment), he will say: He should not steal the drug because it is a significant crime. He did not get a permit, and he forced his way into the pharmacy. He stole a costly drug and broke the window into the pharmacy, causing a lot of damage.
Conventional stage: At this level, the answer will also change depending on where the person stands. It is clear that the person who thinks of the right behavior at the beginning of the level as “helping others” will approve of the behavior (even theft) of a man with the goal of helping his wife: He must steal the drug. He did something that was right for a good husband to do. You cannot blame him for something he did because he loved his wife. If he did not love his wife enough to save her, then he would be blamed. If a person who wants to be “a good citizen” looks at the situation at this level, he will probably say: He should not steal. It is not because he did not love his wife or because he was heartless. If his wife dies, Heinz cannot be blamed. He did do everything he could legally. The pharmacist who is actual heartless and selfish.
Postconventional stage: It depends on whether the person at this stage focuses on justice or equality and prioritizes the individual or society. According to the person who looks from Heinz’s point of view: this forces Heinz to choose between stealing and leaving his wife to die. It is morally right to steal when a choice must be made. He must act on the principle of protecting human life and respecting it. For a person with an equality approach, the possible answer is: He should not steal. Heinz should decide about whether there are other people who need the drug as much as his wife. Heinz must act not following his own feelings for his wife, but in consideration of the value of the lives of all the people in question.
Sena Sarıtaş
Middle East Technical University, Psychology Major Student
Kohlberg, Lawrence (1981). Essays on Moral Development, Vol l. I: The Philosophy of Moral Development. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. ISBN 0–06–064760–4.
