COVID Lockdown, Lord Sumption and a life less valuable.

First, a bit of background - Lord Sumption, former justice on the Supreme court, was part of a debate on 'The Big Questions' about the effects of the COVID lockdown, answering a question about whether it is 'punishing too many for the greater good.' Lord Sumption argued that not all lives are of equal value, and that the protection of the vulnerable elderly should be sacrificed for the wellbeing of children and younger people, so that they can live a more normal life. Lord Sumption is a prominent anti-lockdown campaigner, and when challenged on his view it appeared that he told Deborah James, a  podcast presenter with stage 4 cancer that her life was 'less valuable'. He later said that he wasn't specifically talking about her because she had cancer, but was using the generalisation that people with more life ahead of them are more valuable than those with less life ahead, so younger people's interests should be paramount, and to him, this justifies being against lockdown. His view was supported by Julia Hartley Brewer, who said that 'If you had the chance to save only one person from a fire and had to choose between an eight year old and an 80 year old, you know perfectly well which one you'd save.... It doesn't mean all lives don't have value, it's about relative value when tough decisions have to made.' The show's host, Mr Campbell said that it was a simplistic view as vulnerability is more complex, spanning different ages. Lord Justice also claimed the lockdown had virtually no impact on mortality rates, to which Prof Semple said was simply not true. 

(The original article from The Independent can be found here;  https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/lord-sumption)

Whew, it's a lot isn't it? I expect this to be one of many op-ed pieces about this discussion and the issues it raises, but what I would like to focus on are the assumptions, justifications and ethical considerations people in this discussion are making, and whether they are reflective of what's really happening.  The first argument that Lord Sumption is making is that younger people's lives are more valuable compared with older people'd lives based on the comparative amount of time they have left to live. He uses himself and his children and grandchildren to illustrate this point. There's already a lot to examine in this small part of the discussion, raising a lot of questions. If, like me, you believe that every life has equal value, the argument falls at the first hurdle. But, to further examine Lord Sumptions claims, there are plenty more questions to ask. Firstly, how do we quantify how much value one life has in comparison to another? 

Is the amount of time someone has left to live a meaningful indicator of value? Is this about the impact one person's life has on the world? Does that mean that those with more impact are worth more? Does this assume those with more power are worth more as they have more impact because of their position? Does this make this argument inherently elitist? I would certainly answer yes to the last question. And, due to the ways in which various disadvantages effect people's position in society and their ability to gain and wield power, it is not considering the effects of sexism, racism, and socio-economic status on vast swaths of the population. Decades of social research demonstrate that disadvantages such as race and class cause people of those demographics to die younger than their privileged peers. And as was demonstrated by Deborah James, it is most definitely ableist. 

Perhaps the basis of this is not about the impact of a person's life, but the amount of time they get to spend on this earth. In using himself, his children and grandchildren as examples, Lord Sumption could have been taking the most simplistic view of the situation, and generalising his perspective that he would prefer his children and grandchildren to enjoy their lives at the expense of any risk to his own health. Taken as an individual case, this is something most people could empathise with - that an older man, who has lived a long and successful life, personally values his families happiness and freedom above his own continued existence. The problem, of course, is that in a pandemic, we can't base any of our actions on an individual case. Lord Sumption cannot make this decision for himself and his family without it causing harm to other people. And he absolutely does not have the right to make that decision for anyone else, based purely on his own preferences. This is what is particularly harrowing; that a man who previous held so much power over the lives of others from his position on the supreme court doesn't seem to be willing or able to think beyond the scope of his own experience and perspective. In this case, it has meant that at best, he has simply failed to consider that his assumptions about vulnerability is not restricted to age, and at worst, actively believes that anyone with a disadvantage that makes them more vulnerable to infection makes them less valuable as a human being, and in either case, that he has the right to decide that they should risk sacrificing their health or their lives. What is particularly disturbing is that it is possible that the blinkers of privilege can cause someone to advocate for a policy which would literally kill thousands of people who are disadvantaged across the board, without even realising that this is what would happen. And if you think that sounds far fetched, look at what has actually happened. Policies have been made by people of a very similar socio-economic, privileged background and understanding of the world, and thousands of people have died. It's almost easier to belief that they are all evil, deliberately causing these deaths. Some of the people in power may well be. But a lot of them don't actually intend for these to be the consequences of their actions, but this happens because they are too blinkered to realise and too entitled to ask for or consider different perspectives from people with different, more relevant experiences.      

The assumption that their own perspective is enough to make the morally right decisions, and therefore they have the right to make everyone do what they think is right, is quite neatly encapsulated in the example that  Julia Hartley Brewer used; 'If you had the chance to save only one person from a fire and had to choose between an eight year old and an 80 year old, you know perfectly well which one you'd save.... It doesn't mean all lives don't have value, it's about relative value when tough decisions have to made.' This is an example of the kind of ethical thought experiments argued about in philosophy of ethics courses which both Lord Sumption, studying law, and the PM and MP's who studied PPE at university would have been taught. Instead of looking at real-life actual ethical problems in society, and considering what actions decades of social research indicate would provide the best outcome, a leading and simplistic scenario is presented, and then the 'obvious' conclusion is given. It just so happens that the 'obvious' conclusion is exactly the same as the one that the person who presents the problem already believes. What is particularly frustrating about this is that there is a wealth of social science and medical research which provides a blueprint as to how to best minimise the harm of a pandemic, which the government at least had access to, which was what more successful nations like New Zealand have used, which were ignored simply because the people in power thought that they knew better. And evidently, they are not the ones who have suffered the most as a result of thier insistance that the privilege and position they hold made them right. They are the ones who are most protected from harm, even in a pandemic, and their background and educations lead them to believe that people's lives do not have equal value, that it is morally acceptable to take risks with the lives of others, and that when they do risk people's lives, it is not actually their lives that will be sacrificed. It's much easier to roll the dice if your experience tells you it's heavily loaded in your favour. 

For my part, the discussion was over as soon as Lord Sumption claimed that all lives were not equally valuable. The only way to ensure that we minimise harm to the whole of society is to ensure we minimise harm to those who are the most vulnerable. I can't think of anything more important than upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at every opportunity, for the good of all of us as individuals and as a whole.