Medical technology : questions of life and death

Abstract

What problems has the development of science and medicine raised in matters affecting life and death. And how are we to deal with these problems? These are indeed daunting questions and, in the space of a few minutes, one can only hope to sketch the broadest outlines of any meaningful answer. Yet, it is important to try, since the rapid development of medical technology in the twentieth century is affecting our experience and the structure of our society as profoundly as the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Advances in both basic and applied science in the field of medicine have so altered the material conditions and inherent possibilities of human life that we can no longer ignore their impact. It is a mistake to underestimate the scale, pace and transformative power of these advances - especially at what Paul Ramsey has called the edges of life, in the first and at the last of it. The very nature of human procreation and death have been irreversibly reshaped by technology.