Ethical Concerns in The Future

Ethical Concerns in The Future

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Ethical Concerns in The Future

Within the biomedical field, several ethical concerns are bound to emerge in the future. One of them will be the inclusion of information technology in the development of therapies and treatments. It has been already proven that a wide range of medical devices can be hacked. This makes the users of such devices vulnerable to external attacks that can jeopardize their health (Brody, 2009). Furthermore, information technology is prone to fail and therefore, developing treatments that involve I.T. as the main platform raise ethical questions about its reliability. A related ethical concern is the replacement of flesh limbs with robotic ones (Brody, 2009). In 2011, Mathew James, a patient suffering from dysmelia that caused deformed limbs, requested Mercedes Benz Company to sponsor him with a robotic limb. This is one of the situations mentioned by Brody (2009) in his chapter on new technologies. With the development of robotic limbs, a question of how ethical it is to change biological parts with artificial ones emerges. Physicians will also face further ethical dilemmas on whether or not to carry out such procedures on healthy individuals.

In the economic sector, the issue of ethical behavior among multinational corporations will eventually surface. As of 2010, sufficient evidence has been collected displaying the actions of such entities within the economy (Schultz, 2010). It is projected that more multinationals will raise in the future. Furthermore, their power and scope will grow to influence the government, international regulatory organizations, and even the ordinary man. Most of the conflicts in third-world countries that have resulted in massive casualties can be traced back to such corporations. The reasons for such an unbridled demonstration of power lay in the lack of a proper code of ethics for their actions. Schultz (2010) predicted that in the future, these multinationals can be aggressive to an extent that they perpetrate injustices without legal implications in a phenomenon he called “cosmopolitanism” (Schultz, 2010). Currently, these corporations are operating with little control and ethics in their marketing and growth strategies. In the future, these unethical actions can result in bigger losses for the communities or organizations affected by corporate actions.

References

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Brody, H. (2009). The future of bioethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Schultz, R. A. (2010). Information technology and the ethics of globalization: Transnational issues and implications. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

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