9781422280768

This book will not tell you what to think. It will give you some scientific background and present different perspectives and ideas to consider. Then you can think about and discuss the issues, forming your own opinions and being able to speak intelligently about them. PROGRESS IN RESEARCH Medical researchers are constantly pursuing new ways to treat illnesses, care for patients, and help people to have long and healthy lives. We can now cure diseases that we could not previously, lessen pain, and use tiny pieces of machinery or even body parts from people who have died to replace unhealthy limbs or organs. We can keep seriously ill people alive against all odds, which raises the question—should we prolong life at any cost? Medical discoveries are the products of hard work and smart decisions, with scientists spending a lot of time and money researching diseases and developing new treatments. Like the rest of the health care field, research is an area with many controversial questions: Some of the research involves the use of material from dead bodies, animals, or fertilized human eggs that have not yet grown into babies. Is it right to use these sources for study? The treatments developed are tested for a long time on animals and humans, but some object to these processes. How can we decide what is acceptable? Most new treatments and pieces of medical equipment are developed by commercial businesses. These companies need to make money from their work, or they will not be able to fund new research. But many medical companies are o en very rich—does this mean they are charging too much? What can we do to make expensive treatments available to people who cannot afford them—to those in developing countries, for example? THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN HEALTH CARE Governments play an important role in health care. As well as allocating money to medical services and educating people to live healthy lives, they also have responsibility for other factors in society that affect our health. These can be anything from farming and food-processing methods to traffic control, pollution, and other environmental problems.

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