title?) Asma begins by describing a time when he was on a panel on ethics, along with a priest and a communist. At some point he said, to the shock of his fellow participants, “I would strangle everyone in this room if it somehow prolonged my son’s life.” He was kidding as he said it, but during the drive home, he realized that he believed it. He would save his son’s life at the cost of others, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. He writes, “The utilitarian demand—that I should always maximize the greatest good for the greatest number—seemed reasonable to me in my twenties but made me laugh after my
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