Kateb 92 – Prof Politics, Princeton (George, The Inner Ocean, p 12)
The state (or some other agent) may kill some (or allow them to be killed), if the only alternative is letting every-one die. It is the right to lifewhich most prominently figures in thinking about desperate situations. I cannot see any resolution but to heed the precept that "numbers count." Just as one may prefer saving one's own life to saving that of another when both cannot be saved, so a third parry—let us say, the state—can (perhaps must) choose to save the greater number of lives and at the cost of the lesser number, when there is otherwise no hope for either group.
