One of the greatest successes in development is medicine. The advancement of medicine has made for healthier, longer and better quality lives. Technology is an undisputed factor is such progress. As technology bestows more power, the question of the ethical limits of such power becomes more prevalent, and at times, more blurred. Where do we draw the line between what we can do, with a good intention, and what we shouldn't allow ourselves to do?
65. Medicine restores; technology manipulates.
66. Medicine needs a profession that professes.
67. Health professionals are stewards; not masters.
68. Free, informed consent is some times necessary but insufficient.
69. Therapeutic research has ethical limits.
70. Non-therapeutic research needs more ethical limits.
71. Plastic surgery might be therapeutic; vanity surgery is not.
72. Transgender surgeries don’t change sex.
73. We may engineer organisms but not people.
74. Cloning people for health is also death.
75. The body is a good of the person; not for the person.
The progress of medicine is intrinsically linked with the development of science and technology. This progress was and is plagued with the temptation of cutting ethical corners in order to progress more. The result is a betrayal to the purpose of medicine: To restore the wellbeing of the patient. Medicine is for man and not man for medicine. Whenever the patient is subordinated to the advancement of medicine, medicine stops being medicine and becomes an end in itself. The ethical limits of medicine need to be there to preserve both medicine itself and the purpose of medicine: the health of the patient.