Prolongation of Life

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Prolongation of Life Prolongation of life is one of the most controversial topics in society today. The medical definition for prolongation of life is, “Care provided patients requiring extraordinary therapeutic measures in order to sustain and prolong life”. I believe the main reason why prolongation of life is controversial because many people struggle to agree on what the meaning of “life” constitutes. The definition of life is ,” the state or quality that distinguishes living beings or organisms from dead ones and from inorganic matter, characterized chiefly by metabolism, growth, and the ability to reproduce and respond to stimuli”. Many people believe a person is dead only when their heart stops beating, no matter what the measure are to keep the heart beating; others believe a person truly dies when they are brain dead, paraplegic, or kept alive by machines such as ventilators or feeding tubes. In their eyes, if a person cannot keep themselves alive on their own, without use of medical equipment, then you are truly dead. My opinion falls somewhere in between the two extremes. In example, if a person were to injure their self in a car accident went into a coma and had to be kept on a ventilator to breath, I believe that is fine. Although, there would be a limit as to how long they could be place on life support. If life support was used for multiple days for the patient, to see if he/she would wake up then I feel that would be an acceptable length time. If the patient were to stay on life support any longer, then I feel that would be unethical, this is because in my opinion the patient will not be waking up if he or she had not already. Dialysis is another example of life support that I feel is acceptable in moderation. If a patient receives dialysis twice a month then that is acceptable, but if a patient were to receive dialysis twice a week that would be

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