Prolonging Human Life
Prolonging human life has
increased the size of the human population. Many people alive today would have
died of childhood diseases if they had been born 100 years ago. Because more
people live longer, there are more people around at any given time. In fact, it
is a decrease in death rates, not an increase in birthrates, that has led to the
population explosion.
Prolonging human life has also increased
the dependency load. In all societies, people who are disabled or too young or
too old to work are dependent on the rest of society to provide for them. In
hunting and gathering cultures, old people who could not keep up might be left
behind to die. In times of famine, infants might be allowed to die because they
could not survive if their parents starved, whereas if the parents survived they
could have another child. In most contemporary societies, people feel a moral
obligation to keep people alive whether they can work or not. We have a great
many people today who live past the age at which they want to work or are able
to work; we also have roles which require people to retire at a certain age.
Unless these people were able to save money for their retirement, somebody else
must support them. In the United States many retired people live on social
security checks which are so little that they must live in near poverty. Older
people have more illness than young or middle-aged people; unless they have
wealth or private or government insurance, they must often "go on welfare” if
they have a serious illness.
When older people become senile or
too weak and ill to care for themselves, they create grave problems for their
families. In the past and in some traditional cultures, they would be cared for
at home until they died. Today, with must members of a household working or in
school, there is often no one at home who can care for a sick or weak person. To
meet this need, a great many nursing homes and convalescent hospitals
have been built. These are often profit-making organizations, although some are
sponsored by religious and other nonprofit groups. While a few of these
institutions are good, most of them are simply "dumping grounds" for the dying
in which "care" is given by poorly paid, overworked, and underskilled
personnel. |
