Every day people are forced to make choices. But what if none of the choices is good? Sometimes the dilemma is between the suffering of the many and the suffering of the few. And many people opt for the lesser pain.
This problem of painful choices is addressed in both The Odyssey and in the recent article from the New York Times “Vaccine Case Before Justice Turns on the Language of a Law” written by Adam Liptak. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is torn between loosing six men to a monstrous Scylla but keeping his ship and loosing his entire crew “when the whirlpool [Charybdis] swallows down” (Damrosch, p. 402). It is obvious that for Odysseus this is a very tough choice to make. At first, he rejects and protests against the two options. He asks the goddess if he can “possibly cut and run from [Charybdis] and still fight Scylla when Scylla strikes [his] men” (Damrosch, p. 402). The goddess insists that Scylla is “an immortal devastation” and it is impossible to fight her. So, finally, Odysseus decides to sacrifice six of his men and row for his and his crew’s lives.
Similarly, the Supreme Court struggles to choose between its “Scylla and Charybdis”: “[establishing] a system to compensate people injured by vaccines [and] barring some […] lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers” (Liptak, 2010). On one hand, there are a few lives of injured people at stake. On the other hand, “[exposing] the industry to crushing liability […] could drive companies from the market and imperil the nation’s vaccine supply” (Liptak, 2010). Therefore, much more lives would be in danger. And the Supreme Court has not made its choice yet.
So, the future does not come by itself; people create it with the choices they make, and these choices lead to certain consequences. Thus, as William Jennings Bryan wrote, “Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/13bizcourt.html?scp=4&sq=vaccine&st=cse
