Read the following story to an adolescent or adult and ask him/her to tell you (a) whether or not the husband should have stolen the drug, and (b) why. Assure the respondent that there is no right or wrong answer, which is why it is called a moral dilemma. Your write-up must be typed on a separate sheet of paper. In in the upper left corner of your write-up, on separate lines, give: (a) your name, (b) course title, (c) day and time of course, (d) respondent's gender, and (e) respondent's age. Do not give the respondent's name. Skip two lines and type "Respondent:" followed by the respondent's answer and verbatim justification to the dilemma. Skip two more lines and type "Stage of moral development:" followed by the Kohlberg stage you believe the respondent's answer represents.  Choose only among the THREE major stages, and underline the name of the stage.  Finally explain why you put your respondent at this stage. Give a thoughtful answer, one that is at least four sentences long. If you turn in more than one sheet of paper, they must be stapled together.
 
 
 

In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what it cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1000, which was half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. Should the husband have done that, and why?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Revised 12/21/99