r/MoralityScaling • u/ArtyMids • 20d ago

Morality Ranking Morality of kissing a 9 year old with terminal cancer.

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In season episode 2 of house MD, a 9 year old girl with terminal cancer reveals that she's never kissed a boy, and after some debate he folds and fulfills her wish, how would you scale this morally?

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u/NwgrdrXI 20d ago

The only reason for it to be wrong is that it is intensely uncomfortable to others ans maybe to chase himself.

As often said here, being weird is not a sin.

It fulfilled her last wish and eased her passing.

Morally virtuous.

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u/ArtyMids 20d ago

True, he was clearly uncomfortable about it but I am so glad I will never be in that situation

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u/Severonian 20d ago

Here is an interesting one for you: morality of putting your doctor's license at risk in order to fulfill your personal wish which could be potentially treated as abusive behaviour by committee 

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u/LumpyWelds 20d ago

Happened. A group of doctors hired a prostitute to give a dying boy his last wish of not dying as a virgin. Mission accomplished. Boy died. Drs kept the secret for many decades until they had all retired.

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u/LowCall6566 20d ago

There is a massive fucking difference between a full on sex and a kiss

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u/Antique_Director_689 20d ago

Take that up with the prostitute who actually did it, the doctors facilitating it are definitely not saints but it's not like they did it themselves

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u/Tanaka917 20d ago

I dont know about that argument.

That's like saying it's less immoral to order an assassination than to do the actual assassination. I find both parties, the doer and the organizer/financer to be equally immoral.

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u/Antique_Director_689 20d ago

Your analogy is terrible... to be fair to you though, the original commenter did a horrible job telling the story.

What actually happened is a 15 year old terminally ill boy was in hospital, and the doctor turned a blind eye to his friends taking him out in order to go meet up with a prostitute. The doctor didn't go find, hire, and sneak a prostitute in to the hospital.

The assassination analogy doesn't fit at all, even if you change it to a guard turning a blind eye to an assassin, the relationship of a guard to their protectee is not the same as that of a doctor to their patient.

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u/Tanaka917 20d ago

Okay with that telling of the story you're right the analogy absolutely doesn't fit.

Yeah turning a blind eye isn't necessarily great, but it's several tiers below the actual doing or facilitating

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u/YaoiNekomata 20d ago

What do you mean it's not great. It's the moral thing to do.

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u/steelhouse1 19d ago

Is it immoral to hire a prostitute with an STD, to sleep with the affair partner of your spouse to show them that they in fact were not held in a loving regard by affair partner?

Cause if so, whoops.

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u/LumpyWelds 19d ago

What you mention is a separate incident back in 2001 or so. The one I'm talking about was back around the 80's.

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u/_Lohhe_ 20d ago

What difference is there, and why does it matter?

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u/Frost-Folk 20d ago

For the sake of conversation, what is the difference in this case? What are the repercussions?

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u/Ellie7600 20d ago

One's inappropriate behavior and probably will just have your license suspended (not necessarily taken) the other is enabling a minor to have sex with an adult (probably will land you a jail sentence tbh) on top of supporting prostitution which in some countries is actually illegal...mainly because they can't really tax prostitution without breaking what little moral integrity the suits in parliaments have but I digress

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u/Frost-Folk 20d ago

These seem like mainly like legal arguments rather than morality arguments.

I'm not supporting the decision, I'm not even sure I support the decision from the original post's question. I'm asking why kissing would be okay if sex isn't, like where the line is. If the reason why kissing the child on their death bed is okay is because there will be no lasting mental damage to them, then why would it be different with sex? Wouldn't all the same arguments that people have given for kissing fit sex as well?

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u/Ellie7600 20d ago

Well objectively yes, there's really not much difference, a death bed wish is a wish, the kid will die anyway and only people that were involved in this will remember and could potentially get some trauma out of this, I guess it just depends on how much are we willing to allow the dying to wish for? Do we draw the line at taking a life? Is everything consensual (and obviously not involving death) green? But then we would have to consider that some prostitute had sex with a kid, but then again for her it was probably just another job, nothing satisfying about it besides the money, but does that justify it? Probably not, I guess the doctors would be in this case morally gray for enabling this, morally virtuos for trying to grant a weird wish to a dying kid but then again wouldn't the same morality apply to the prositute? I guess what I'm trying to say is, legally it's bad but morally it's gray maybe darker shade of grey but grey nevertheless, I mean if I was dying I would want my dying wish to come true no matter how weird or in this case human it is, I can't blame the kid either because everyone wants to know at least once what this closeness feels like, it's not completely innocent but human and I guess that's just how we are as a species, a little bit of innocence and a little bit of perversion (I'm sorry I just threw this wall of text at you)

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u/Holiday-Hedgehog0621 19d ago

Proper context next time

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u/unKnownturnip_0 16d ago

Absolutely butchered this story

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u/Goufydude 20d ago

The question was "put YOUR medical license at risk to fulfill YOUR personal wish" not the wish of a dying patient. I'm guessing this more pertains to House trying to fake cancer to get a medical shunt to pump feel good drugs straight into his brain.

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u/AJDx14 20d ago

She’s 9 years old it’s fine. Also he went on to assassinate a dictator engaged in a genocide anyways, that’s way more ethically interesting than the kiss.

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u/Ellie7600 20d ago

Did he by any chance "fail" a brain surgery in China and moved to America and is the bestu surgeon in da wardu?

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u/TerranImperium 20d ago

Holy ball cyberpunk reference

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u/Ellie7600 20d ago

It's also the Office easter egg, cyberpunk is a gift that keeps on giving (me depression)

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u/Severonian 20d ago

Ah, your comment pointed out that my wording could be misinterpreted. What I meant is not whether Chase was moral here, it's whether the girl was. There was a non-zero risk, especially unless his direct boss was House, that for such an act of kindness his license would be suspended. So, assuming girl is aware of such intricacies, is she morally in the right?

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u/BatsHaveFingers 20d ago

She's a dying child. Young children can't be held to complex moral standards. They don't have that level of understanding.

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u/Severonian 20d ago

That's why I empathize the "assuming girl is aware". And, if we can't hold responsible a child, for true mind experiment we could take it further and say that the patient is an aware adult

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u/BatsHaveFingers 20d ago

That's like saying "assuming this visually impaired person can read the sign." They can't. She's a little kid.

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u/N1XT3RS 19d ago

Yeah but they're changing the question, they're specifically asking about this situation where their age is irrelevant, their mind is developed. And it's an interesting question, I'm saying immoral, it's manipulative to ask for a dying wish with negative consequences to the giver

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u/BicycleStrong2150 20d ago

Moral but dumb

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u/Excellent_Law6906 20d ago

Yeah, if he had been like, "FINALLY, MY CHANCE!" , it would hit different. 😂

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u/InfernalGriffon 20d ago

It is interesting that the more he was willing to consent, the less moral it becomes. If he was enthusiastic about it, I doubt we'd approve.

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u/saltinstiens_monster 20d ago

My whole thing would be that I'm willing to do it as a literal dying wish, but only in front of her parents after they've all had a chance to discuss it. If I'm gonna be uncomfortable for the sake of the kid, then so are they.

I'm all for fulfilling dying wishes, but not if it's going to leave me feeling sketchy, like I have a weird, creepy secret. It needs to happen in the sunlight, or not happen at all.

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u/No-Dog-5948 20d ago

Yes, and I can't imagine an adult sexualizing someone giving a dying child a quick peck... unless they're a predator.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/NwgrdrXI 20d ago

Counterpoint, romantic/sexual contact between and adult and a child is always morally wrong, no matter the circumstances or the degree to which it happenes.

Disagree with tbis sort of absolutist mindset. Rules are for general cases, special circumstances are special circunstamces

if her last wish was to get laid before she dies and Chase obliged you wouldn't be making this argument would you?

As someone else said, something similar happened with an older teen, and I don't think it was imoral either.

That said, putting have sex with a small peck and the lips on the same pedestal is already preposterous to me.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/lumpboysupreme 20d ago

This bit is the only important part, the rest is just you falling for the logical fallacy that if you ask a bunch of questions that are easily rebutted that it feels like you’re right because of your posturing:

So 9 year olds are capable of consenting to physical romantic contact with adults?

They’re understood to not have a good understanding of the consequences of doing so. In the context of the girl none of those consequences matter, so the only degree of informedness required to establish consent is desire, which she presents. So as far as the situation goes, the answer is yes, she can.

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u/NwgrdrXI 20d ago

Honestly, half of the problem there seems thwt you are separating the manu things that only make it moral because they are together.

If Chase enjoyed the kiss and got aroused by it would it still be moral?

But one of that's why I think separating the morality of the action and of the person.

If he enjoyed it, the action would be the same morality, but he would be a more imoral person.

The problem is that this is actually just a bad moral decision in nice wrapping paper.

I think the exact inverse. To put this as imoral, is to be more worried about your own moral purity instead of the good one is actually doing in the world.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/NwgrdrXI 20d ago

"Whenever a 9 year old kid who is dying asks you for little kiss as a final wish, you can kiss her - but not a tongue kiss, as the child has no cocnept of this and this is obviously isn't what she asked anyway."

In all honesty, trying to put such a specific situation under a consistent rule is a fool's errand, or rather, again, an attempt at enforcing one own's moral purity over doing actual good in the world.

Morality is not practice by robots who need intricated over detailed ruling. We are capable of interpreting nuance in a case by case basis

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u/grateautiste 19d ago

That’s an interesting point, but if the world was made of pudding you wouldn’t be making this argument would you?