Prolonging Life with Technology - Is Quality Being Lost?

Timothy Ruth

Professor Wilson

WR 122

3/14/2014

Prolonging life with technology—is quality being lost?

Using technology to make advances in our health is a benefit to society. Technology is supposed to be used to better the quality of our lives and how we live them. Some will disagree and that is their right in an advanced democratic society. But, whether it be the quality of life we live or the quality living of life, the benefits will always outweigh any negatives. Advances in medicine have given us longer and healthier lives. Diseases such as Polio, Small Pox and Chicken Pox that were commonplace a generation ago are now unknown to this generation due to their eradication by way of vaccination. Other diseases such as Heart Disease, Cancer and HIV are still with us, but now have courses of treatment that lengthen the years our loved ones are with us and massive amounts of research are going into long term cures. All these advancements in medical technology, treatment and medicines are still relatively new and have been closely predicated with the advancement in computer technology and research. After all, it was not too long ago, everyone thought smoking cigarettes was good for you. Looking forward to the next generation, science will master many more amazing discoveries and cures that will further advance the quality of our lives.

Go to any children’s hospital and ask the parent of a child suffering from cancer if they wish for the technology and breakthrough to occur that would cure or prolong the life of their child. What do you think their answer would be? Today, we can give these children a course of treatment that effectively prolongs their lives and in some instances puts their disease in remission. Many predict that soon there will be a cure for cancer and as our technology advances, so does our continued success in fighting this disease Once a person is diagnosed as having cancer, the malignant cancer cells have already evaded the body's own immune system defenses. Cancerous and damaged cells normally are destroyed by the immune system, but malignant cells that succeed in establishing tumors, have done so by fooling or crippling an immune response that normally would be directed against them. So today scientists are asking the question ‘What if the immune system could be "retrained" to recognize and attack the tumor?’ (Kinkead) This is the idea behind cancer vaccines. Unlike traditional vaccines, the cancer vaccine is a therapy, delivered after the person already has the disease, not before. Training the immune system to eradicate malignant cells offers a nontoxic way to treat cancer, and even to eliminate recurring tumors. For the first time, a cancer vaccine therapy, which is specific for a common lymphoma, has been approved by the National Institutes of Health to start large-scale, phase-three clinical trials with patients. The cancer vaccine against follicular lymphoma, was made from a unique receptor-protein found on the surface of the malignant cells, and it has proven itself effective in keeping 90 percent of vaccinated patients in complete remission for four years after treatment in the phase-two clinical trial. This is just one of many attempts to cure cancer occurring in the world today that have begun in the last few decades. (Lowry, p. 70)

Ask any family member of a loved one that is HIV positive or suffering from active AIDS, if they do not constantly wish for the technology to create a breakthrough in the research with a cure for the ugly disease. As our understanding and knowledge of diseases such as AIDS, increases so do the odds increase that we will master a cure, just as a generation ago it was done for polio. Recently, there was news regarding research breakthroughs on AIDS. When scientists made the stunning announcement last year that a baby born with H.I.V. had apparently been cured through aggressive drug treatment just 30 hours after birth, there was immediate skepticism that the child had been infected in the first place. But recently, the existence of a second such baby was revealed at an AIDS conference here, leaving little doubt that the treatment works. A leading researcher said there might be five more such cases in Canada and three in South Africa. And a clinical trial in which up to 60 babies who are born infected will be put on drugs within 48 hours is set to begin soon, another researcher added. If that trial works — and it will take several years of following the babies to determine whether it has — the protocol for treating all 250,000 babies born infected each year worldwide will no doubt be rewritten. “This could lead to major changes, for two reasons,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, executive director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Both for the welfare