@ConfusedWishes Said
A question I've always thought was tough but good: If you could save 1000 people by sacrificing a single child, would you?
My answer is no. But not because the single loss is to terrible a cost. Death is important, it's a fact none of us want to face, people need to die so that we may live on. Currently I believe we have overpopulated to much. Soon even germs will scarcely outnumber us. I'm not saying we should commit mass genocide, but we definitely need to stop living in Disneyland. If everyone lived to 100 the world would not be as nice a place to live in. It's tough but it's true.
I disagree.
That one child in your scenario could die at 2 years from cancer. Chances are slim the child would live to add much to the world. Working on odds of 1000 its different. Those 1000 people may be future scientists, future discoverers, future brilliant minds. They may be brilliant minds already, at work on life-changing discoveries. All of that could help generations of people, not just their own.
I also disagree with you because most people live until 80 something anyway these days. With advances in modern medicine, vaccinations and health care being what they are, most people in my generation will live until 100 at least. My kids will live longer than that....and so on.
The world and the people within it are amazingly clever - they have solved problems facing the globe before, and if over-population poses a real problem, they will solve that too. I feel respectfully that your scenario would be more relevant if we were all so over-populated that we were standing shoulder to shoulder on the earth with no more room left & the person with the longest neck to breathe the air would win.
We aren't there yet. Hopefully we won't be; I suspect that the world will be too smart to let that happen before it happens, if that makes sense.