Animals and the Harm of Death - Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics - page 44

McMahan is aware of these problems and acknowledges that future
interests may be relevant to the moral assessment of present acts:
If our concern is with individuals' time-relative interests, we must
take account of all the time-relative interests affected by our action.
The important consideration is whether one's action frustrates a time-
relative interest; it does not matter whether the act is done before the
time-relative interest exists. 18
This would mean that even though Charlie was very young or even
non-existent when Claire drained the trust fund, Charlie's later time-
relative interests count as well. If this is the case, the Time-Relative
Interest Account does not have the above-mentioned implications in
the case of draining the trust fund. One could no longer claim that
draining the fund when Charlie is very young matters less due to his
weak psychological connectedness with his future self at the time he
would have received the fund. All time-relative interests that Charlie
will have in the fund have to be taken into account, including those
he has later, after the fund has been drained. Just as with the unmodi-
fied foreclosure view, the timing of draining the trust fund makes no
difference if one understands the Time-Relative Interest Account in
that way.
If the Time-Relative Interest Account is supposed to yield the same
result as the unmodified foreclosure view in the case of draining the trust
fund, why does it yield different results in cases concerning the harm of
death? The explanation is as follows: The difference is that if a being
is killed, he or she will never again have any time-relative interests. In
contrast, Charlie lives on. He will continue to have time-relative inter-
ests in receiving the trust fund, even after the fund has been drained.
Now, imagine that either an infant or a 20-year-old person had to die.
If the 20-year-old dies, the infant lives on and will continue to have
time-relative interests in continued life. If the 20-year-old dies, he will
have no more time-relative interests in continued life. Thus, the time-
relative interests in continued life of the infant will outweigh those
of the 20-year-old, and we can afterwards conclude that it was better
that the infant lived. If however, the infant dies and the 20-year-old
lives on, we must conclude that this was the better outcome. Hence, on
this definition of the Time-Relative Interest Account, what is the better
outcome depends on what actually happens. Furthermore, contrary to
what McMahan wishes to claim, this account does not imply that the
death of a 29-year-old is worse than the death of an infant. 19