Ethics is what separates human beings from animals and savages. But ethics alone won’t save the human race from the harsh conditions brought by our environment. Sometimes, compromises are needed in order to achieve the greater good. Numerous advances in medical technology has made it possible for us to prolong and save lives that would otherwise have died hopelessly in the past. Medicine has improved the quality of our lives and delivered us from the harsh treatments of nature. But everything that we have done, and will about to do in the name of medical science, has its corresponding price.
The further we advance, the greater the price, and the more pressing would be the ethical questions that would rattle the minds of medical proffesionals in choosing between ethics and practicality, progress and waste, and life and death. Euthanasia and the Right to Live Voluntary euthanasia is not ethically justified and should have been prohibited. This would mean that medical professionals, whose primary goal is to save lives, could be as well classified as murderers, at least by a certain portion of the population. This could result to the medical practitioner losing his or her professional credibility.
Most religious organizations believe that taking away someone’s life, with or without consent, is a crime against humanity and against God. Religious people may refuse treatment from one who practices euthanasia, leading to even more loss of lives. Moreover, due to the illness being sufferred, the patient may not be mentally competent to embark on such a decision, and so have lost his ability to hope for the future. The state should never have allowed voluntary euthanasia just because the patient has lost hope for a cure, since no one can really divine what lies in the future. Clinical Death and PVS
Persistent Vegetative State (VS) cannot be legally justified as death since the patient just lost awareness, not all bodily functions. The currently legally accepted death is defined as the loss of all mental functions. The fact that the heart is still beating and the patient is still breathing while in VS suggests that the patient still has considerable brain activity, in contrast with a braind-dead person. Moreover, it would be too early for a person to be declared as dead once in VS since there were cases wherein the patient recovers from VS and able to resume normal lifestyle.
Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis and Sex Selection PGD for sex selection should be prohibited by the state. This could cause imbalances on the world population ratio, especially on countries where there is gender preference. In aome cultures, like in China and India, masculinity is preferred to the fairer sex. These heavily populated countries could cause global problems on our population ratio, since every parent in these countries would want their offspring to be male. The complications arising from allowing sex selection using PGD is far-reaching and unpredictable.
If there is a shortage of the female population, men may fight each other to win the affection of another women, causing more chaos in a community. This imbalance and other such effects may even lead to human extinction. Restricted Access to IVF, Donor Eggs A few hundred years ago, due to severe limitations on medical science, increased death rates due to sickness and calamities made it harder for countries and communities to maintain a stable population. At present, one of our major concerns is overpopulation. By granting access to IVF and donor eggs to all age ranges, our approach to global population explosion would be much nearer.
Although it is understandable that some aspiring parents may desperately feel a need to raise a family but are unable to do so naturally due to age or illness, they still do have an option to adopt orphaned children who are just as desperate as them to have a family of their own. However, other believe that age should not be a problem when having access to IVF and donor eggs, arguing that, with the advancements in the field of medicine, conceiving a child in old age, though considerably not easy, is not impossible. PGD and Preventing Down’s Syndrome
PGD is a convenient way of ensuring a healthy child free from single gene defects, at the cost of several human lives. Attempts at removing the unwanted gene has some degree of uncertainty. , and unsuccessful ones mean embryos would have to be discarded—a method far worse than abortion. The human embryo, although lacking flesh and blood, still is a human being and have rights, including the right to live. By doing this procedure, the not only the parents, but the doctors themselves have denied the person this unalienable right.
Moreover, there is also a small chance that the embryo might be damaged during the operation, and may trigger more abnormalities on the child than the one that was removed. Somatic and Embryonic Stem Cell Research The reason why Somatic Stem Cell Research is less controversial than Embryonic Stem Cell research is because of the source of the stem cells being used. Somatic stem cells are coming from the stem cells of living human beings. Embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, are obtained from living embryos.
While somatic stem cells are located in various parts of the human body can be harvested quite easily and does not result to the death of the donor, harvesting stem cells from embryos often leads to the destruction of the saidembryos—an act which may be synonymous to abortion. This has caused widespread disapproval for embryonic stem cell research. Elderly Patient’s Social Worth Should Not Be Based on Wealth Elderly patients, however old, are still human beings. Thus, they shouldn’t be treated according the size of their supporter’s pockets.
Democracy has been developed so that the masses can be protected against the negative effects of capitalism. Should the medical professionals factor out a patient’s social worth based on wealth, this would be tantamount to saying that they have denied the elderly patient’s democratic right in the hospital. This may greatly tarnish a medical practitioner’s credibility as a medical professional. It would seem as if they are saving lives not on the basis of necessity but on purchasing power. Surplus Embryos Should be Donated to Stem Cell Research Once IVT has been performed, there may be surplus embryos.
Those embryos can either be stored future use at expensive costs or simply be discarded . Parents should let those spare embryos to be donated for Stem Cell Research, since that field of Science has been the very agent that has made their very dream of having a child possible. Storing embryos poses no practical benefit unless used, and just discarding them would only deny Stem Cell Research its most valuable resource. Those embryos should never be discarded unless its parents have plans of conceiving another offspring. Surplus Embryos Should Not be Donated to Stem Cell Research
Surplus embryos should never be donated to stem cell research. Once donated to a stem cell research facility, the parents of the embryo would never know what kinds of experiments will be done to the embryo, which after all, is still their own offspring. No parent would relentless want to have his or her own child to be dissected and experimented upon. It would be best if the surplus embryos be either stored for future use, or be donated to infertile couples. Moreover, there arises no further need to donate more embryos since a small portion of the created embryos are being donated for research at the onset of embryo harvesting.