To weigh up human lives in this calculated manner inherently strips them of dignity and reduces them to mere numbers. This “aggregative” ethical standpoint, in which a loss of utility to one person can be compensated for by gains in utility to other people, fails to respect “the separateness of persons” [1] . We are all different people, and we do not all share in the alleged benefits to maximizing total utility. For this reason, our moral intuitions reject out-of-hand many variants on “killing one to save five”; for instance, we would think it abhorrent to abduct a random person and harvest their organs in order to save five dying people, even in the absence of side effects like people now being afraid of having their organs taken. Also, see “different lives weigh differently” argument below.  [1] Richardson, Henry S., ‘John Rawls (1921-2002)’, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 18 November 2005,