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Medical Advances Essay

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Medical Advances

Besides the computer revolution, medical advances have caused tension between faith and reason. The medical advances of the Twentieth Century have many beneficial effects for humanity. Diseases that used to be dangerous or life threatening, like mumps, measles, and whooping cough, are no longer worries in todays medical world. Tetanus, typhoid, and the bubonic plaque can now be treated with antibiotics or other medicines. Vaccines, especially the polio vaccine, freed many people from the effects of a disease. Advances in heart surgery and organ transplants have saved many lives. Anesthetics and painkillers have been made to reduce or eliminate pain during surgery or a painful disease. Advances in cancer and AIDS have …show more content…

This will tremendously benefit farmers who raise livestock, and cloning of the superior animals will also make the food supply healthier and larger in this growing world. Other advances in medical technology deal with the preborn and postborn babies and prolonging life techniques. Prenatal technology and obstetrics have allowed babies to be born as early as twenty-two weeks after conception. Life support systems have helped to prolong lives and have even supported people in comas who have "woken up" after many years. However, these medical advances have been questioned as to whether they really are "advance." Many of these new medical techniques conflict with peoples faith in medical ethics and with their religious beliefs, especially Catholicism. A debate about the extent to which humans are allowed to "play God" to destroy, alter, or create life forms has risen. Most of the new controversial medical procedures have become accepteed in this impersonal, technological world, but many people do not believe these procedures are really "progress." Many people believe that Church should be the driving force in the fight against AIDS. Robert K. Gray in "Some Diseases Are Less Equal Than Others": The War Against AIDS (1990) states that "the pulpit of the Catholic Church is the mightiest of weapons" against the spreading of AIDS and against the hate that evolves for AIDS victims.(6) However, most people who have AIDS were contaminated by sinning

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