“To Live On”, a 2005 art installation composed of roses and infusion bags by Min Jeong Seo, elegantly captures the idea of medical advancement of a double edged sword. Seo’s art piece involves fifty long stemmed roses, eerily suspended with the blooms perfectly preserved in infusion bags, while the stems hang freely, drying and decaying at their own pace. It’s an apt visual metaphor that showcases the good and bad consequences of constant medical research and development, one that addresses the concepts of “playing God” and where quality of life gives way to mere extension of it. While scientific progress has given society increasingly effective therapies and has allowed us to extend our collective life span, it has also led us into increasingly woolly territory where we must consider if genetically typing fetuses, blanket prescription writing or a systematic emphasis on tertiary care is compatible with a higher quality of life than if our bodies were left to their own devices. Unpacking these issues requires a degree of separation away from the medical field and the patients, practitioners and occasional overcommitment to scientific dogma that introduces biases and cloudy judgement into the question of how society should use its technology. This core tension has always fascinated me and has inspired me to constantly ask if the newest discovery is actually the best, or if a simpler, more effective solution already exists and someone just hasn’t figured out how to apply it.
In Lu Hsun’s short story “Medicine” brings an autobiographical and mystery element that highlights certain faults of Chinese socialism. According to the mandate of heaven an individual with given power, typically the emperor, has the right to rule the divine power. However, “Medicine” dichotomizes traditional Chinese culture by ridiculing that their really isn’t an essential culture. Lu Hsun critiques Confusion principle by comparing it through “cannibalistic” attributes. “Medicine” warns readers that the Confucian tradition will consume the future and does this through three important key factors: bringing opposite concepts to reveal the author 's
Accompanying with the enormous technological progress, medicine as a modern science has been affected in many positive ways. However, the timeless tradition and the everlasting secret of medicine is merely care giving. Modern medicine has been relying too much on technology, which is cool, but also very cold from a humanistic aspect. All the patients are presented by a series of numbers via binary signals of the internet. Nowadays, medicine is more about running tests and diagnosing based on numbers, as opposed to investigating symptoms upon the physician’s observational skills and comprehensive knowledge. As bedside caring becomes less concerned as it was in the old days, the diminishing of the sense of caring in medical professionals appears as a side effect. There is no doubt that technology enables medical professionals to perform all types of fancy tasks, though it is their offering of compassion that comforts the patients the most. And this quintessence of medical practice ought not to be overlooked at any point of the history of medicine.
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.
But instead, it seems that what they are doing is feeding on each other hope. For example, patients remain hopeful that doctors can cure their diseases and doctors are hopeful that technology can deliver these changes to their patients. However, by feeding on their unrealistic hope, physicians enter without knowing into this vicious cycle for pushing for harsher and unrealistic means or treatments that endanger in the process the patient’s sense of dignity. That said, Susan ‘s physicians and his son, at one point, were victims of this cycle because they allowed, instead of alleviate the pain in Susan’s
Daniel Callahan begins Chapter three with a critique of the modern state of medicine; he believes that medicine has placed too much effort on life extension. Callahan then tries to determine the goal of medicine through his beliefs. He states, “I want to argue that medicine should be used not for the further extension of life of the aged, but only for the full achievement of a natural and fitting life span and thereafter for the relief of suffering” (Callahan, 53). In his thesis, he states that he believes that medicine should only be used for the relief of
It is a fact that we have a longer life expectancy than ever before. This has been achieved through years of thorough research, technological development, and most importantly resilient individuals. Doctors are constantly faced with different enigmas with no right or wrong answer. What first attracted me toward medicine was the desire to help and support, in particular, disadvantaged people. Coming from a country with an underdeveloped health care system has made me realised the impact it has on people’s life.
The plurality of biomedical researchers and engineers dedicate their careers to testing the limits of technology and medicine on the human body. However, as innovations become increasingly provocative, the ethics of biomedical research has become quintessential to moving forward into the future of research. I aspire to become a biomedical engineer, but while many of my classes will teach me the raw skills to become an engineer, I feel that a tutorial with Hunter “Patch” Adams would allow me to delve into the ethics of biomedical research in medicine. Patch Adams has spent his life treating patients with an emphasis on their emotional well being, specifically utilizing humor as a complement to treatment. Throughout my life, I too have used humor
Bioethicists ask these questions in the context of modern medicine and draw on a plurality of traditions, both secular and religious, to help society understand and keep pace with how advances in science and medical technology can change the way we experience the meaning of health and illness and, ultimately, the way we lve.
In the realm of modern medicine, which pervades the framework of North America’s health system, death is to be avoided and delayed at all costs (McGarry 2017). For all its mensurable successes in the treatment of illness, biomedicine is incapable of curing death; an axiom unsettling for the majority of Westerners (Text 2017: 254). Given such, accounts of death as unapologetically
Our life is an age of previously unimaginable medical breakthroughs. The technology we know today is one that emulated witchcraft to our great grand parents. Yet, with all that we can
The level of technology that concerns the health of people in the United States has grown dramatically in the last twenty years. With this new wave of advanced technology numerous controversies have risen up into the public eye. At the top of this list, in health technology is the materials and methods used in keeping humans alive. There are many different viewpoints on how far technology should be allowed to go. Technology cannot effect the patient’s way of life.
Keeping a person alive by excessive treatment might devastate the family and make the dying suffer tremendously in the end. “Advance medical technology that seems to one person a godsend, extending life, may seem to another a curse that only prolong dying. Dignity can be devalued amid technology focused solely on the biological organism.”
“To Live On”, a 2005 art installation composed of roses and infusion bags by Min Jeong Seo, elegantly captures the idea of medical advancement of a double edged sword. Seo’s art piece involves fifty long stemmed roses, eerily suspended with the blooms perfectly preserved in infusion bags, while the stems hang freely, drying and decaying at their own pace. It’s an apt visual metaphor that showcases the good and bad consequences of constant medical research and development, one that addresses the concepts of “playing God” and where quality of life gives way to mere extension of it. While scientific progress has given society increasingly effective therapies and has allowed us to extend our collective life span, it has also led us into increasingly woolly territory where we must consider if genetically typing fetuses, blanket prescription writing or a systematic emphasis on tertiary care is compatible with a higher quality of life than if our bodies were left to their own devices. Unpacking these issues requires a degree of separation away from the medical field and the patients, practitioners and occasional overcommitment to scientific dogma that introduces biases and cloudy judgement into the question of how society should use its technology. This core tension has always fascinated me and has inspired me to constantly ask if the newest discovery is actually the best, or if a simpler, more effective solution already exists and someone just hasn’t
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” With these words, Socrates stated the creed of reflective men and women and set the task for ethics: to seek, with the help of reason, a consistent and defensible approach to life and its moral dilemmas (Walters 22). Ethical inquiry is important to us when we are unsure of the direction in which we are heading. “New philosophy calls all in doubt,” wrote John Donne in the wake of the Copernican Revolution and of Charles I’s violent death, suggesting that new thoughts had challenged old practices (Donne). Today, new practices in the biomedical sciences are challenging old thoughts: “New medicine calls all in doubt” (Walters 22).
Over the course of many centuries, medical technology has developed to a great extent. Studies show that recent equipment has evolved more in the last ten to twenty years than in the past thousand years. Before human time, people learned to treat themselves by just using natural substances. Now-a-days, our hi-tech systems in the medical field have been created for the most effective tools for a high level of patient care. While they advance the tools, it will then allow for quicker diagnosis, less pain, and fewer costs, which in the end will help save more lives. Some people are accepting that modern technology can buy them more time to live while others might find it quite alarming because they fear