Extending Lives--But at What Cost?

Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End presses on an extremely difficult subject: death. Gawande talks about the need to confront death and not ignore it by taking steps in having a meaningful and satisfying end. Readers say that Gawande does demand a lot from people and the book is eye opening but it does not have a guide to having a better end in life. I agree that Gawande is demanding a lot but people still to listen to him but I think Gawande does give a guide to having a more satisfying end to life though not simply.

With a respectable argument against the idea of pharmaceutical advances eventually leading to immortality, Lexchin uses multiple forms of rhetoric, mostly logos, to sway the readers. He sets our deep fantasies of someday being able to live forever against our rational minds and backs up his case with sound logic and viable examples that leave us no doubts about human limitation.

Life expectancy, or the estimated years of life for a person or group of people, has increased over the years but it is still surprisingly lower than expected in places such as the United States. America ranks twenty-fourth on the life expectancy list under Japan, Australia, France Spain and Italy. What causes this disparity in the ranking and statistics in an advanced industrialized society such as the United States? There are major statistical factors that influence the United States ranking in world life expectancy, involving education level, poverty, race and gender. The diverse groups of people living in the United States affect the health statistics negatively, bringing in influences from education and income levels, race and

The environmental setting in the film “Logan’s Run” envisions a dystopian society in the 23rd century. In the film, Logan 5 struggles to escape the social effects of death due to the fact that a person must die at age 30. Eventually, they are reborn as “renewals”. Modern society focuses on the human body, picturing the process of life and death, reproduction, and rebirth. The social interaction between humans and the environment uncovers an enigma of people living over the age limit. It allows Logan 5 and Jessica 6 (his companion) to escape from the futuristic society and enter a safe human civilization.

The lifespan observation involves a young female adult who is 18 years old and the older male gentleman who is 57 years of age. They were observed walking and playing outside during recess time at school. Although gender and age shape leisure activities, they were both socializing, interacting and playing while enjoying a brisk walk on the track field. For example, the female student could not keep up the fast pace walking exercise versus her counterpart the older staff member. Moreover, I found it quite fascinating and interesting that the young female could not keep up with the older male staff member. In fact, both individuals were engaged and enjoying the fitness and fun during the leisure recreation activity. Age is nothing but a number.

Extended life would be nice for some people, however an healthy life will beat an extended life

Philosophers throughout history often have a pessimistic outlook on life. Socrates, Lucretius and Epicurus are just some of a number of philosophers that argue against the liberal view of life. Daniel Callahan is a contemporary philosopher that explores the role of medicine in modern society. Callahan argues against the liberal view of life by saying that people should focus on living full and fitting lives. In the first section, titled The Fallacies of Callahan’s Arguments, I explore the problems with his ideas and show that his argument does not justify setting a limit to human lives. In The Argument for the Continuation of Life, I argue for the liberal view of life and support it with Christine Overall’s views. Human beings should be able to extend their lives as they see fit and setting limits based on anti-life extension ideas would go against the individual’s right to choose.

We are born into this world knowing that we have to die from something. It was never written that we have to live to be a certain age. People keep coming up with ways to alter life or to buy more time that does not belong to them. Scientists like Dr. Moreau make life altering decisions that affect humans and animals in that he is changing the way that they were originally designed to be. These alterations can make people more susceptible to disease and infection that they may not otherwise have if they had remained as their original beings.

As the expectancy of life increases and aging of Baby Boomers, the need for health care grows, nevertheless, there is projection U.S to experience shortage of nurses. Therefore, it is imperative for organizations to identify the causes of nursing high turn-over rates and come up with critical methods to retain nurses within organizations. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), by the year 2022, 3.24 million jobs will be created. Retaining existing nursing staff has become a challenging piece of healthcare as the demand for client care has progressively grow and prospective replacement nurses covers nearly 1% of the workforce (AACN, 2016). In this situation, good leadership skills by Nurse Managers is needed

was one of the several who believe we must extend life as long as we have the means and knowledge to do it. To not do it is to be liable for negligence”. (Huttman 187)

In the textbook, Invitation to the Life Span by Kathleen Stassen Berger contains a section on how children are discipline in different cultures. Berger provided sources from Micheal J. MacKenzie and his colleagues on how different gender, ethnicity, and age plays a role in spanking children. It is said that mothers tend to use this method more often than fathers and boys in African American homes tend to have a greater chance of being spanked. I learned that in order to study the development in diverse setting, people have to do background research and possible studies to see as to why people do certain things like spanking. It is also good to considered every possible factor that could play a part. For instance in this finding, it is good

Human life is valuable, but doesn’t last forever, but recently scientists have come up with ideas to prolong life. This would be good in some ways, but overall, life is something to be cherished, and should not last forever. In the article “Should We Live Forever?” by Justin O’Neill, it states, “If babies continue to be born but no one dies, population growth - already straining Earth’s resources - will accelerate. Providing food, water, shelter, and education will be a huge challenge.”

The Wings for Life Foundation is an organization that was founded by Heinz Kinigadner, a two-time motocross world champion, and Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder of Red Bull. Kinigadner 's son was involved in a tragic accident in 2003 that caused him to be tetraplegic, which is the loss of movement/sensation in three extremities. These two men then decided that since paralysis research is not a widespread condition and is also underfunded they created The Wings for Life Foundation. “Ground-breaking discoveries made by Prof. Dr. Sam David in 1981 and by Prof. Dr. Martino Schwab in the early 1990s showed that injured nerve cells in the spinal cord are capable of regeneration after specific types of treatment” (Life). Heinz and Mateschitz invited these scientists to discuss the possibility of a treatment to help everyone whose life was affected (Life).

The theme of survival at the cost of morality is evident in an abundant amount of literature seen today. This type of literature is studied everywhere from school classrooms to reading on an individual’s free time. Morality relates to what behavior is considered right or wrong based on an individual’s ethics. Sometimes a person may do things that they did not originally intend to do, but they feel as if they have to behave this way to get what they want, or even survive. The characters discussed in this English course that have displayed the quality of survival at the cost of mortality is Pi, Claudius, and Hamlet.

In our day and age as we know it, there have been astounding advancements in medicine. The average life expectancy has risen. People are being educated in issues that surround a healthy life style. As a society, we are trying to increase our life span and defeat death. While people are following strict