John q movie ethical issues

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Hello All,

Acting out of a sense of duty can be either wrong or right based on your ethical approach. What one person view as wrong might be seen as right in another person's eyes. A deontological approach will focus on the person acting, their intention in carrying out the act, and especially the rule according to which the act is carried out, rather than the consequences that follow (Mosser, 2013).

My example in which someone acted out of a sense of duty will come from the storyline of the movie, “John Q” (2002), starring Denzel Washington as John Q.Washington’s character John Q’s son fell ill and was diagnosed with an enlarged heart. His son was in need of an emergency heart transplant, but due to financial hardship and lack of insurance coverage; John Q could not cover the $250K operation cost, yet alone the $75K down payment to place his son on the donor’s list. All out of options, John Q decides to take a hospital emergency room under arm with hostages and demanded his son be placed on a donor list. John Q decides to commit suicide and donates his heart to his son, but at the very last minute his son received a heart from another individual. John Q eventually faced only kidnapping charges and was sentenced to 3-5 years jail time.

It was wrong for John Q to act in this way, despite the fact that it is his moral duty to help his dying child. You can apply various ethical deontological theories to this incident. The rule(s) corresponding to which John Q’s actions are carried out would apply to the categorical imperative. Kant sees categorical imperative as an, “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (as quoted in Kemerling, 2011, “The Categorical Imperative,” para. 1). Kermerling (2011) sites this as meaning, “Each individual agent regards itself as determining, by its decision to act in a certain way, that everyone (including itself) will always act according to the same general rule in the future” (“The Categorical Imperative,” para. 1).