I'm not hear to debate anyone, but if you think it is ok to kill a currently living being to resurrect a dead being, then you are fucked in the head. Tuvok and Neelix died painlessly and unaware in an accident. Tuvix was murdered, and was made fully aware of their fate beforehand, to the point where they even begged to be spared.
It's not an equation to be worked out. It simply boils down to respecting the wishes of a currently living and conscious being. Otherwise anyone's life could be forfeit based purely on some arbitrary valuation of what that life is worth. Why don't we just harvest your organs and give them to people we deem more useful, ya know?
If I had come about through the unwilling merger of two people, and my death could restore those people, it's probably ethical to kill me to make it happen.
I don't think it's necessarily reasonable to call the two component people dead either. Death is a not a particularly well defined term, but we don't tend to apply it to people who might get better.
Why don't we just harvest your organs and give them to people we deem more useful, ya know?
The knowledge that you live in a society where you could be legally killed at any point for the greater good, and the resultant fear and uncertainty probably would cause more harm overall than doing so could actually alleviate.
What you are saying is it is ethical to kill a being that has specifically said it doesn't want to die, in order save two others.
Same reason it's ethical to kill billionaires and eat the rich.
I love this because the Toymaker is basically Q.
Do this one again, this time use Janeway in the second panel.
The whovian in me screeches the toymaker came first, the trekker points out that while Q seems to have some peculiar moral purpose the Toymaker is just an eternal ancient who sets shit on fire for fun.
Also supernovas can harm Q IIRC. The Toymaker, not so much.
