Science: Fallacious or Marvelous?

The field of medicine is something every living specie on this planet depends upon, but like any other field, they have their ups and downs. The accumulation of decades of both historical and modern science has brought us to the point where we can cure things that we couldn’t have imagined. Things like a broken spine, heart failure or even a malfunctioning body. It would be safe to say that modern medical science can now be compared to miraculous, but what happens when medical science has ethnically crossed the limit? It has been argued that the field of medicine is degrading the value of life by the use of stem cell research, full-body transplants and over pricing Medicare products.

Stem cells are basically unspecialized cells that do not have any purpose, they might seem useless, but they have the ability to become specialized cells. In other words, they have the ability to copy cells and replicate them. If someone broke their spine, fragments of bone that will never grow back will be out of place, therefore paralyzing the victim from the line of fracture and below. If stem cells were placed in between the cracked surface of the spine, they will then begin to mimic the bone cell structure and replicate themselves, therefore making a spinal connection to the nervous system and relieving the victim of being paralyzed from the spine below. It seems pretty great right? Wrong. Stem cells are found in every human body, but are most abundant in human embryos (undeveloped baby, seen when pregnant). Modern science has found ways to unite a sperm and an egg to create a zygote, also known as an embryo; they are cloned within a petri dish. The main purposes of the cloned embryos are to be terminated and extracted of their blastocysts (stem cells). In other words, human embryos that can develop into a normal human being like us are being cloned and killed for the sake of the injured. That can be compared to murder by some, other classify it as a necessity.

Although modern science has walked a long successful path, we haven’t reached the stage of actually transferring a healthy brain to another donor’s body. It’s completely hypothetical. Even if we’ve reached that far, would full body transplants be morally ethical in the first place? The truth is that it wouldn’t, and because there has been a lot of debate of body’s being donated to hospitals these days, scientists and biochemists alike have been attempting this type of transplant for a very long time. But where do all the experimental body’s come from? They were most likely donated, but the scientists fail to mention that the body of the donor is being experimented on to whoever mattered to the donor. In the story of Alice, little does Mrs. Jarred know about her deceased daughter Gail’s body being transferred to Alice’s brain. She only finds out after the transplant is complete. She was sobering along with her husband. Think of Mrs. Jarred as a round character, if this were to happen today in real life, the outcome of sorrow and pain wouldn’t be so different from what Mr. and Mrs. Jarred felt.

Finally, the over pricing of Medicare products. Luckily we live in a country with free health care, but in countries like American where you have to pay $50 to refill an asthma container and $250,000 for a heart transplant is insanely inappropriate. Considering that nearly one-third of individuals in the U.S. were obese in 2004 would be an alright reason to at least cut down heart transplant costs due to fat blocking arteries, and they said “smoking” was an expensive way to die. Fortunately, it’s not the whole world that faces the same medical cost explosion like the States do. For example, an asthma container in the States would cost around $50, in Cuba it’d cost around 5 American cents, enough to make anyone with asthma sigh a wheezy breath of relief.

Medical science has saved an unimaginable number of lives since the human species began. But like any other action on this planet, they have their positives and negatives. Their negatives include inappropriate ways to extract stem cells, attempting to switch human bodies without letting the loved ones of the donor know, and the over pricing of medical products.