Ethical Issues

Modern medicine has gained extraordinary new powers to prolong life. Medical treatments such as kidney dialysis, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), organ transplants, respirator support, and even dispensing food and fluid by artificial means have become common. While these new treatments often help, they sometimes are used when they do not benefit patients or when patients do not want them. In coming to terms with sustaining, taking, or not prolonging life, medicine has drawn on both its own ethical traditions and society's broader ethical and religious traditions in deciding what is right.