Saving the lives of others is a fine thing, as long as it doesn't inconvenience you. AIDS provides another example. Some people insist on AIDS patients' human rights and say we must not discriminate against them, while others say they should be quarantined and not allowed to came into contact with the healthy. By defending the rights of the AIDS patient we incur the risk that his fatal disease will be spread to others in exchange for the belief that human life has no meaning unless it is guaranteed to all. As a result, we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that AIDS will spread to a certain extent.
Compassion is an extremely expensive proposition, and in a sense it is very inefficient.
Whatever the cost, humanity as a whole must create a structure in which the weak can live with the strong, the sick with the healthy. The advances of science and technology have made the previously clear-cut boundaries between life and death, man and machine, vague, and a new ethical agenda awaits humanity. There can be no doubt that the issue of the symbiosis of mankind and technology, including the complex problems discussed above, will press in on us with greater urgency as we approach the twenty-first century. Another issue that the twenty-first century must face is the creation of a new way of thinking about life and death, and a new way of living to match it. This excessive evaluation of human life is greatly mistaken on two counts.