Medical Techniques? Social and Ethical?

Question

can someone tell me the social and ethical issues relating to the introduction of new medical techniques.

Answer 1

Think about it...  The pros are that the new technique could save people's lives or heal the sick and repair the injured.  The cons are that it might not work or it might be more expensive and work no better than current methods.  The development and testing of the new method requires that, at some point, it be tried on people. Hopefully, the doctors and scientists working on the development have do the work carefully and thoroughly so that the minimize the risk of doing more harm than good.  The ethics of withholding a new technique that could imporve peoples lives should be obvious.  The social issues may be more complicated. For example, if someone developed a cheap safe pill with no side effects that would suddenly increase people's life span by 200 years and maintain their physical health in what ever state is was today, the population of the earth would grow even faster than it is now (and it is really growing very fast).  How would society adjust?  Would people have to work until they were 264 years old?  What  jobs would young people do if no one retired for the next 150 years?  Would there be enough food to feed everyone?  Where would people live?  how would it affect marriage?  How would families change if you had grandparents, great grandparent, great great grandparents, greet great great grandparents, etc?  If people no longer got sick, would we need as many hospitals as we have today?  What about all the companies who make and sell drugs that would no longer be needed?  You could go on and on with these type of questions.