This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy bites is available at www

philosophy bites.com. How do you value a life? Governments constantly have to balance and evaluate

lives. Transport policy, health policy, environmental policy, all require some kind of calculation. Normally it would be impossible to

identify the actual winners and losers, but in any case it's not just a question

of whether John and Jane should be saved rather than Malcolm and Mary.

Sometimes it's whether it's better for John and Jane to live longer, less flourishing lives

or shorter and richer ones.

John Broome from Oxford University has spent a good portion of his career

thinking about how lives can be weighed. It's no trivial question.

John Broome, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Thank you very much.

I'm delighted to be with you.

We're going to focus on the topic,

weighing lives.

I wonder if you could begin by just giving an example or two of situations in which we have to weigh lives?

Yes, there are situations that range all the way from personal decisions by individuals,

up to decisions by governments.

Individuals, for instance, sometimes when they're suffering from terminal diseases

have to make a decision between a treatment that's aimed to prolong their life,

but may demand some suffering in the course of it or a treatment

that doesn't try to prolong the lives but just makes them better while they last.

At the level of governments, there are many decisions.

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