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What Broke My Father's Heart Analysis

Decent Essays

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. With the level of technology at where it is today there are many risks involved with many treatments. What the companies tend to do is advertise products and try to make the risks seem small. Every time you watch TV nowadays there is a commercial on there about a treatment that has …show more content…

In most cases they can do that because of the fact that the odds of one of the side effects happening are minimal. While on the other hand some doctors will down play risks in order to make the procedure to happen because it makes them richer. This needs to stop because someone who is very trusting with their doctor might go through with the procedure and then end up with a life altering side effect which means they cannot live life like they had in the past due to technology. An example of this is in the essay “What Broke my Father’s Heart.” In the essay by Katy Butler, her dad was in bad health and needed to get a pacemaker put in to make it through a surgery (Butler). They were not informed of how long the pacemaker would go and if they would have known then they may have looked at different options or elected not to do it. If the doctor would have told his patient that the pacemaker would last ten years then their decision might have been a different one because his condition was getting worse quickly. Also because of the thought that his body would not sustain normal life for ten years. In the essay she also shows that not all doctors are like that and that some would do what was right for the family by telling them many different options. For example their family doctor would have recommended against getting the pacemaker put in because he knew that the patience’s cognitive function would not …show more content…

The biggest key to it is that there must be control over the advancement of technology. Every good thing in this world has a point where it starts to become a problem with negative effects and this includes technology concerning a person’s health. In the essay Priorities in Biomedical Ethics by James F. Childress, he says “It is limited and constrained by nature itself, by moral principles and rules, and by ultimate loyalty and responsibility to God” (Childress p.4 1981).These moral principles that he is talking about are the ones concerning a person’s health being downgraded after the procedure and that it is not morally right to keep them alive (Childress 1981). Then when he mentions the responsibility to God, he means that God controls when someone’s health declines to the point of death and that, we as his creations, should not go against him. The fact people are kept alive in artificial ways to where they cannot live to the standards that God wants them to, is going against our responsibility to God (Childress 1981). James Childress goes on to say that human’s control over nature can be destructive at times because when we as humans start defying God we are committing a sin. He does say however that we can put limits on our technology to where we don’t sin as heavily towards God. Then he says “If a society views death as an enemy, always to be opposed, it

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