>> "Of course. Debilitating a few dozen people is nothing compared to the harm caused by cancer and heart disease, and if we had a choice between the two it would be wrong to pick the greater evil."
You say that like it's fact but it's your opinion based on your ethics. There's also information we don't know. Are these people volunteering or being selected against their will? Either way it would also be fine to argue that the rights of those people are so important that society can't debilitate them even if it solves cancer and heart disease. Everybody has to die of something so why ruin these peoples lives when the people saved by not getting heart disease/cancer die from something else anyway?
You say that like it's fact but it's your opinion based on your ethics. There's also information we don't know. Are these people volunteering or being selected against their will? Either way it would also be fine to argue that the rights of those people are so important that society can't debilitate them even if it solves cancer and heart disease. Everybody has to die of something so why ruin these peoples lives when the people saved by not getting heart disease/cancer die from something else anyway?