Ethics of Chemo Therapy

The bioethics problem that I have decided to write about that has the biggest impact on me would have to be about the use of chemotherapy. I understand it is a wonderful medicine practice that helps save lives, but it is only a temporary fix that causes a long-term problem for the individual. After the completion of chemotherapy, a huge portion of people survive that tend to go through such a horrible experience. Putting someone through that amount of pain just isn’t ethical. The emotional damage that it puts on the families of the patient is huge, having to see their loved one go through so much pain, it is unbearable. The ones that end up surviving the treatment, usually are just signing a contract to acquire leukemia at a later date. That is what happened to my mother when I was just a boy. She had been diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma, and went through chemotherapy, not once, but three different time. Who knows, maybe it was because she did it more than once, but when I was 16, she died of leukemia. The amount of damage it does to the bone marrow and the blood in the body, they usually always contract leukemia later on.

The ethical theory that I am going to go with, is the divine command theory. I know religious beliefs vary in each individual, but I am a firm believer that when it is a person’s time, it is their time. And with modern medicine fighting off these infections in our worldly bodies it may give us extra time with them, but it will always circle back to the same thing. Just prolonging the inevitable. That is what happened to my mother, don’t get me wrong, I am glad I was blessed with the time I had with her, but I wish I wouldn’t have seen her in all that pain. I feel as though that is the best theory to go along with this, if I am wrong, please let me know.

-Cyral I. Callender III