‘There is no number of mild headaches whose relief would outweigh saving the life of an innocent person.’ Discuss.

This is a question from last year's IB paper. It is clearly a platform to discuss and compare deontological and consequentialist ethics because it involves comparing and measuring types of suffering. Give a consequentialist answer:Because death is far more severe than a headache, it outweighs any number of headaches in a felecific or hedonic calculus = headache*x < death (meaning the total suffering of one death outweighs any number of headaches)At which point, respond with a deontological/Kantian solution:On the other hand, Kant urges is to not treat people as a means to an end, but rather as ends in themselves. If we are in a situation where we can cause, say, 30 headaches to save a life, Kant would argue that by using people we are acting immorally. Alternately, this question could be used as a springboard into a critique of consequentialist ethics. Because consequentialism requires that we compare different types of suffering, it can be difficult to quantify between different kinds. This example is perfect, surely if death counts for a fixed number in a hedonic calculus, like -100 hedons, and a headache counted for -1 hedon, then relieving 101 headaches would be better than saving a life, which doesn't seem quite right. This could be used to demonstrate the issues of quantification and incomprehensibility in consequentialist ethics.