In his article, "Should the Numbers Count?" John M. Taurek addresses the common belief that when making decisions in trade-off situations, one should consider the relative number of people involved in the situation, in order to determine our course of action. Taurek responds to this by saying, that when determining what to do in a scenario you should not consider the numbers involved; everyone should have an equal opportunity.
             Taurek backs up his thesis by stating:
             1. You have no obligation to save more lives over just one
             2. Everyone's life equally matters, people are not objects
             3. Only fair response is to flip a coin
             In this paper, I will prove that Taurek's argument is valid, but not sound because although his premises entail his conclusion, first premise is false. I believe this because a person is obligated to save a majority over a minority.
             Taurek argues that one life is no more special or more important than the other (p.941,left column), which I can agree with. Taurek adds though that given a situation where you can either save more lives verses just one life, one should not save the majority over the minority because it is immoral. Taurek seemed to be employing the "Equal Greatest Chance" principle, according to which, when deciding whom to save, one must give each person the greatest possible chance of survival consistent with everyone else having the same chance. The person deciding the fate of the people should flip a coin to determine what to do because it is the most fair way to decide (p.941, left column). Taurek then gives an example where a person comes across a medicine dilemma to prove his point:
             Taurek first off, starts by introducing the scenario where there are six deathly ill people. One person (David) needs all the medicine to live, while the other five only need one-fifth of the medicine to live. You have the power to either save the five people, or save David, but you cannot save all...