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I agree that Mr. Wilkow, if he answered authentically, would probably opt to save the small child, and sacrifice the petri dish. That said, it would probably leave his head ringing with dissonance. But it's not really all about the numbers. Faced with similar dilemmas, all of us would weigh the alternatives using more factors than numbers.
If Mr. Wilkow were asked whether he would save one teenaged boy, or five old men who could not remember what they had to eat for breakfast, or whether to save one republican or five democrats, he might believe that all are living organisms with as much right to live as any other and still choose to save the teen and the republican and feel that he made the best choices that he could have made under the prescribed conditions. So I think that Mr Wilkow could go ahead and say that he would save the small child, and he could reasonably defend his choice without being made to look like an ass. I suspect that he could handle that on his own......
