Over the years of human existence, many fields of science and art became indicative of developmental success. Current knowledge of different aspects of science is truly remarkable considering how quickly and significantly the insight has improved. Since its early beginning, medicine has always been an ideal model of a progress-integrating pursuit. All the newest and relevant skills or information found in other fields have been used to benefit medical techniques. Even today, many discoveries and innovations of technology and natural science rapidly find their way in medicine. Just as an example, one can think about a recent Augmented Reality technology, which is already used in medical education to provide students with 3D anatomy lessons. …show more content…
The issue of quantity versus quality of life is one example of a dilemma that could have been avoided if there were sufficient ethical context about it. The problem is all related to the following question: Should doctors prolong existence knowing that patients will have a poor quality of life? The inability to think wisely about this ethical difficulty can be noticed in a lot of cases of patients with incurable and lethal conditions. Barbara Moran, a science writer for New York Times, shared with her readers one of these cases that happened to her mom. Her mom, who had chronic liver disease, spent four months in an intensive care unit before dying in front of her relatives. Barbara observed the consequence of doctors’ inability to promote a good death instead of a long life. As she tells her mother’s story, “She had four months in the I.C.U., endless and pointless and painful procedures, and final days full of fear and despair. Why is this medicine’s default death for so many people?” (Moran). Furthermore, statistics also prove the extensive usage of intensive care in the USA. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that over 40 percent of Americans dying with cancer were admitted to the I.C.U. in the last six months of their lives, which number is double of that any other …show more content…
Some currently limited resources include transplant organs as well as beds in Intensive Care Units (Scheunemann LP, White DB). An unavoidable yet ignored ethical issue that medical society needs to face is who gets treatment. Up to today, there are no instructions for doctors who might face this situation. If there is a resource such as a transplant organ available only for one patient, how can one select the lucky patient that receives it? Does a 75 year old veteran deserve the treatment or a 15 years old child with all his or her life yet to be discovered? Dr. Eike-Henner W. Kluge studied and identified three possible ways to allocate resources: The Hippocratian Model, the Social Service model, and the Business Model. As Dr. Kluge explained, each of these models has its advantages and disadvantages. The Hippocratian Model encourages doctors to help patients as said in the Hippocratian Oath. This means that doctors treat their patients without considering age, race, religion, and any other factors. It is in a sense a first-come, first-serve method. However, the issue with this model as Dr. Kluge explained is that there is not going to be one patient for a limited resource. The amount of people wanting to get a kind of treatment can so rapidly escalate that this method will not provide any unique solution to
The improvement of medicine over the course of the human successes gave great convenience to the people of today. Science has cured and prevented many illnesses from occurring and is on its way to cure some of the most dreadful and harmful illnesses. As the world modernizes due to the industrialization, so does the ways of medicine. Some cures are approached by chance, some, through intense, scientific measures.
According to Pozgar (2016), the demand for organs and tissues for use in transplantation far exceeds the available supply. This is largely due to the increasing success rate of organ transplantation. This disparity between the supply and demand for viable organs has created an ethical dilemma. Since, there are not enough organs to help everyone, it must be decided who will, in effect, live or die. Those charged with making those decisions attempt to use a set of guidelines to determine who the beneficiaries will be. However, when a decision results in the suffering and/or death of another, there are going to be ethical questions.
The Dying of the Light is an article by Dr. Craig Bowron that captures the controversy surrounding the role of medication in prolonging life. The author describes that many medical advancements have become a burden to particularly elderly patients who in most instances are ready to embrace the reality of death. Dr. Bowron believes that dying in these modern times has become a tiring and unnatural process. “Everyone wants to grow old and die in his or her sleep, but the truth is most of us will die in pieces,” Bowron notes (Bowron). The article does not advocate for euthanasia or the management of health care costs due to terminal or chronic illness. Bowron faults humanity for not embracing life and death with dignity as it was in the past. He blames the emergence of modern medical advances and democracy as the sole reason why everyone is pursuing immortality or prolonging of life rather than embracing the natural course of things. The article is very articulate and comes out rather persuasive to its target audience that happens to be health-conscious. Craig Bowron uses effective rhetorical strategies such as logos, ethos, and pathos to pass on his message. The article’s credibility is impeccable due to the author’s authority in health matters as he is a hospital-based internist. A better placed individual to dissect this issue by analyzing his experiences in the healthcare profession. The article incorporates a passionate delivery that appeals to the readers’ hopes, opinions, and imagination.
Even though Barbara’s intentions in this paper are directly stated, her claims she gives does not back her argument at all. After reading her major claim, which states that we do not have the right to die (97), I feel the complete opposite of what she thinks and I believe a person should have the right to die if there is no chance of them getting better in the future. The author’s grounds explained all of the struggles of keeping a very sick man alive, which I believe gave me some very good evidence to write my counter argument.
The issue at hand is whether physician-assisted suicide should be legalized for patients who are terminally ill and/or enduring prolonged suffering. In this debate, the choice of terms is central. The most common term, euthanasia, comes from the Greek words meaning "good death." Sidney Hook calls it "voluntary euthanasia," and Daniel C. Maguire calls it "death by choice," but John Leo calls it "cozy little homicides." Eileen Doyle points out the dangers of a popular term, "quality-of-life." The choice of terms may serve to conceal, or to enhance, the basic fact that euthanasia ends a human life. Different authors choose different terms, depending on which side of the issue they are defending.
Tom Harpur, in his 1990 article in the Toronto Star - "Human dignity must figure in decisions to prolong life" - presents numerous arguments in support of his thesis that the use of advanced medical technology to prolong life is often immoral and unethical, and does not take into consideration the wishes of the patient or their human dignity. However, it must be noted that the opening one-third of the article is devoted to a particular "human interest" story which the author uses to illustrate his broader argument, as well as to arouse pity among readers to support his view that human life should not always be prolonged by medical technology. This opening section suggests that a critical analysis of Harpur 's arguments may find widespread use of logical fallacies in support of the article 's thesis. In this essay I will argue that, given how greatly
Through his discussion of quality of life and death, Singer offers ethical guidelines for the decision to refuse treatment to prolong life in the case of a terminal illness.
There are questions about transplant allocation in regards to the four major ethical principles in medical ethics: beneficence, autonomy, nonmaleficence and justice. Beneficence is the “obligation of healthcare providers to help people” that are in need, autonomy is the “right of patients to make choices” in regards to their healthcare, nonmaleficence, is the “duty of the healthcare providers to do no harm”, and justice is the “concept of treating everyone in a fair manner” ("Medical Ethics & the Rationing of Health Care: Introduction", n.d., p. 1).
The word ethics is derived from the Greek word ‘ethos’ meaning character or conduct. It is typically used interchangeably with word moral which is derived from the Latin word ‘moves’ which means customs or habits. Ethics refers to conduct, character and motivations involved in moral acts. Ethics are not imposed by a profession, by law but by moral obligation. It is unwritten code of conduct that encompasses both professional conduct and judgement. Ethics helps support autonomy and self-determination, protect the vulnerable and promotes the welfare and equality of human beings. An ethical dentist- patient relationship is based on trust, honesty, confidentiality, privacy and the quality of care.1
Throughout history physicians have faced numerous ethical dilemmas and as medical knowledge and technology have increased so has the number of these dilemmas. Organ transplants are a subject that many individuals do not think about until they or a family member face the possibility of requiring one. Within clinical ethics the subject of organ transplants and the extent to which an individual should go to obtain one remains highly contentious. Should individuals be allowed to advertise or pay for organs? Society today allows those who can afford to pay for services the ability to obtain whatever they need or want while those who cannot afford to pay do without. By allowing individuals to shop for organs the medical profession’s ethical belief in equal medical care for every individual regardless of their ability to pay for the service is severely violated (Caplan, 2004).
In today’s society we all try to prolong life as long as possible. Technology is finding new ways that we can stay healthier and lead productive lives longer. Governor Lamm said “we should be careful in terms of our technological miracles that we don’t impose life on people who, in fact, are suffering beyond our ability to help”(Collins,1991,p.540). That is the real issue at hand; are we in fact over stepping our boundaries by keeping people alive who are maybe beyond our help. “Machines can extend the length but not always the quality of life” (Cloud,2000,p.62). As doctors, they need to think about the well being of the patient and if any methods could really help the situation.
A divergent set of issues and opinions involving medical care for the very seriously ill patient have dogged the bioethics community for decades. While sophisticated medical technology has allowed people to live longer, it has also caused protracted death, most often to the severe detriment of individuals and their families. Ira Byock, director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, believes too many Americans are “dying badly.” In discussing this issue, he stated, “Families cannot imagine there could be anything worse than their loved one dying, but in fact, there are things worse.” “It’s having someone you love…suffering, dying connected to machines” (CBS News, 2014). In the not distant past, the knowledge, skills, and technology were simply not available to cure, much less prolong the deaths of gravely ill people. In addition to the ethical and moral dilemmas this presents, the costs of intensive treatment often do not realize appreciable benefits. However, cost alone should not determine when care becomes “futile” as this veers medicine into an even more dangerous ethical quagmire. While preserving life with the best possible care is always good medicine, the suffering and protracted deaths caused from the continued use of futile measures benefits no one. For this reason, the determination of futility should be a joint decision between the physician, the patient, and his or her surrogate.
Physician-assisted suicide refers to the physician acting indirectly in the death of the patient -- providing the means for death. The ethics of PAS is a continually debated topic. The range of arguments in support and opposition of PAS are vast. Justice, compassion, the moral irrelevance of the difference between killing and letting die, individual liberty are many arguments for PAS. The distinction between killing and letting die, sanctity of life, "do no harm" principle of medicine, and the potential for abuse are some of the arguments in favor of making PAS illegal. However, self-determination, and ultimately respect for autonomy are relied on heavily as principle arguments in the PAS issue.
At the core of this project lies a fundamental challenge; determining the worth of a human life. Even though no human should have such power, the premises of this project required that we do just that. Naturally, when such power was given to us, instantaneously moral conflict began to arise. People would argue that certain questions were unfair, unnecessary, or even discriminatory and without fail, someone always had a dissenting opinion. Due to the relatively wide range of opinions and demographics, it was very hard to compile a strong, complete list of questions to ask the prospective patients. In the end, we only asked the candidates approximately thirteen questions to which the answers would determine life and death.
We, as humans, are mortal beings. Our life span is finite. Even though we are mortal, we try to hang onto our lives as long as we can; fear of death and wanting to live forever are, after all, part of human nature. Sometimes, however, the field of medicine capitalizes on this aspect of humanity. While it is certainly true that one goal of medicine has always been to prolong life, another goal has been the alleviation of pain and suffering. One point at which these two views collide is over the hotly debated issue of euthanasia.