Dr. Bruce Hilton, Director of the National Center for Bioethics and author of “Ethical Issues in Human Genetics,” spoke Tuesday, Nov. 14 on the growing control over birth, life and death.
“Many dilemmas have arisen due to the development and advancement of modern medicine.” According to Dr. Hilton, society has not kept up with the major advancements made by science thus creating several legal, ethical, moral and social problems.
With the development of the test-tube baby came the development of such questions as is that baby a human being from the moment of conception and if so, does the doctor commit murder when he takes the best embryo out of several and then throws the rest away? Does the doctor have the right to do experimentation on the embryo or if he doesn’t where does he get the permission to perform the experimental process?
Also, there is the question of testtube mothers, or those women that bear other peoples’ children creating a class of women that perform that act function as their sole means of support. “Do these women give society another chance to experiment on women.”
When asked if he felt that society would ever come to that said point of utilizing such fashions as substitute mothers, cloning and abortion with the sole purpose of preventing the birth of an unwanted child, he stated that he felt that such processes are nearer in the future than most people would like to admit. He also stated that he feels society is not ready for all the ethical questions that arise when a major advancement is made.
Dr. Hilton stated that he believes it should be left up to each person to decide what they feel is right and not up to the profession. He also quoted several statistics, such as the probability of more than 80 per cent of all deaths after the year 2000 will be elective. 90 per cent of all doctors who answered a recent poll stated that they wanted to leave a Living Will for their own doctors but 60 percent said they would not carry out the wishes left in their patient’s Living Will. Hilton also pointed out that it cost over 1 billion dollars a year to keep a child with Down’s Syndrome institutionalized and that each person has approximately six to eight lethal genes in their system but the chance of their mate having the same genes is highly improbable.