At this point we’ve made infographics, written argumentative
essays and some of us are even preparing TED Talks about our service learning
locations. Personally I’ve decided not to do my TED Talk on Alzheimer’s
research although it’s definitely an important topic that people need to be
informed about.
Based on the fact that every 66 seconds someone in the
United States alone develops Alzheimer’s it’s extremely important that we put
forth an effort to get people more educated about the subject and also come up
with a cure if at al possible. As the 6th leading cause of death in
the US lots of research is necessary to make a cure possible and to prevent it
but with so many of the patients with the disease being no longer capable of
making their own decisions, it’s difficult to decide whether it’s ethical to
make decisions about things, such as research, on their behalf.
In my opinion, it’s best to not make decisions for patients
who can’t do it themselves in regards to participating in research that has
unknown results unless it’s therapeutic treatment. Therapeutic treatment
meaning that there is a large chance that it only has positive effects and no
negative results. I also don’t think it’s right to make decisions about
invasive research such as surgery into the brain for patients either. The best
way to avoid all these problems, however, is to allow the patient to create an
advance directive as soon as they’re diagnosed so that they can make their own
decisions about treatment in the future so that their wishes can be best
carried out and respected. Although it’s not possible for every patient to do
this, as long as patients are diagnosed early enough I think it’s possible to
decrease the ethical issues related to Alzheimer’s research.
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