Unit 3: Problem Solution

Medical Technology

1. However, keeping people who are in a coma, alive indefinitely, by attaching their bodies to machines, creates an ethical dilemma. How does a person decide whether another person whose heart cannot beat on its own, and whose lungs are pumped by a machine, is still alive or not?

2. Recent advances in the field of medicine and biotechnology have brought about situations that could scarcely be imagined only a generation ago. Battery operated plastic hearts can be implanted into people. People can be kept alive indefinitely by machines

3. Thus, our new ability to prolong life has forced changes in our very concept of life itself, an issue involving not only legal but also profound moral considerations.

4. The power and responsibility given to the people who control these machines has necessitated the introduction of a new definition of death in our society.