To be clear, I’m not suggesting we do what I’m about to propose, I just think it’s an interesting ethical/moral thought experiment.
If we could find a lot of people who want to unalive themselves, and say to them: there’s been a disaster and there are a lot of people who are stuck (e.g. a mine collapse, or 9/11 or something like that) and it’s a dangerous situation for rescue workers to go into, since you don’t care if you die we’re gonna send you in… would it be an ethical or moral thing to do? To ask or make people who don’t care if they live or not, to go into a situation that there’s a known high risk that they won’t survive?
(Also, I not asking wether it is a good idea to send such people in or wether it would be effective — I’m only interested in the ethics/morality of such an idea)
How would this even work? Recruit on the suicide prevention line? How would you train suicidal people? Just give them the rundown on the way to the earthquake or mine disaster? Do we think suicidal people are organized, motivated, fit, and competent?
Wholly irrelevant to the question of whether it’s ethical or not. The debate over whether it’s feasible is a separate debate entirely. I asked if it’s ethical/moral.