Mount Everest
First of all, in case you hadn’t heard, a double amputee named mark Inglis successfully climbed Mount Everest. Everyone cheared and haralded it as an accomplishment (except for GoBlog) but that wasn’t the end of the story.
Inglis was climbing with a group of 40 people. On the way up to the summit they noticed a body, but they ignored it and pushed on to the top. After reaching the summit they passed the same body and this time they checked it out and found that it was a man that was still alive, but half frozen and almost dead. They left the man on the mountain while he was still alive and headed back down the mountain.
From the basic account it sounds like a horrible thing that they did. However there are many different points of view and many think they did the right thing. First of all you have to consider the conditions that all the climbers were in and the toll that the mountain had taken on them. They were over 26,000 feet and there were questions concerning whether helping this one man would put the rest of the men’s lives in jepardy. The climbers tell their side of the story and they add a detail that on the way up they thought that the body was that of a dead polish man whose body has been there for years. The incident is a black eye for Inglis and he is left with a lot of explaining to do. Sir Edmond Hilary (first guy to ever climb Mount Everest) is very upset. Here is an interview with both Inglis and HIllary on what happened.
The issue is now being turned over the the ethicists. My opinion is that first of all there is no excuse for them not investigating what was wrong with the man on the way up. First of all apparently the man ran out of oxygen and so thats why he stopped. On the way down they found that his body was half frozen and he could only move his eyelids, but perhaps if they had stopped to help him on the way up, they could have given him oxygen and he would have been ok.
If they had stopped initially and found that he was incapacitated they should have been willing to turn their expedition around and save the mans life. I thought Hillary made an excellant point that when you consider the gear that you are bringing you need to make sure you have enough to help out others in need. Obviously this doesn’t mean carrying two of everything, but there were 40 in the party that left this man to die. Amoung them there must have been what was necessary to save him.
Finally even if they could not turn back or could not save the man, someone in that party could have volunteered to stay with him in his last monents, either on the way up or on the way down. I think this demonstrates the power of excusing yourself based on the fact that everyone else is doing it. Throughout all of history evil has taken place because no one is willing to stand up and say this is wrong, or else sacrifice for what is right.
Given all that I have to say that these were extrodinary circumstances and we don’t know everything that was going on up there. probably hundreds of thousands of dollars had been put into Inglis accomplishing his quest, and they were so close to the top, I can understand if they were driven to push on. Also just because lots of people climb Everest these days doesn’t mean its easy and it could very well be that given the conditions at the time an attempt to save this man or even stay with him would have meant the certain death of some in the party.
The thing is if I were Inglis I would much rather be known as the man who sacrificed his dream to attempt to save a man’s life then the man who accomplished his dream at the cost of another man’s life.
Warren Said,
June 1, 2006 @ 12:05
small sidebar, Sir Edmund Hilary wasn’t the first man to climb Mt Everest, just the first westerner to be recorded as having done so.
As to the leaving the body, I might’ve been inclined to check and see if he were alive on the way up and not down – I mean, really, if you apssed it once, why bother checking the second time? Then again, once they found out he wasn’t dead, leaving him is a pretty nasty thing to do. Throw ethics out the window on this one – it’s not about ethics, it’s about morals and being a neighbor, is it not? Once you know he;s alive, if you can do something, you should.
bradlands Said,
June 5, 2006 @ 09:13
So who is the first person to reach the summit then?