HEALTH AND HUMAN WELLNESS IN MODERN TIMES

HOSTAGE TO TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN INNOVATION

Authors

  • Raphael Karekatt Mercy College of Ohio, Toledo

Keywords:

Abortion, Bio-Medicine, Euthanasia, Medical Technology, Regenerative Medicine, Reproductive Technologies, Stem Cells

Abstract

Technology, envisioned and engineered by human innovative quest, has been an effective tool to humankind’s progress across the centuries. But when technology becomes so powerful as to usurp human decision making and the human person is so beholden to the spell of technology as to abdicate his/her role in making life’s choices and decisions, it does not bode well for humanity’s future. Technology appears to have staked a stranglehold on human affairs in the modern times, incapacitating the human person to decide for oneself, calling the very human identity itself. Modern medicine and health care is an area of modern life where this stranglehold of technology is most profoundly felt, determining every choice made on human health and wellness. The following reflection examines the current status of medicine being a hostage to technology and explores how to remedy the situation.

Author Biography

Raphael Karekatt, Mercy College of Ohio, Toledo

Raphael Karekatt MSFS, D. MIN., ministers as chaplain and presbyteral moderator at St Martin de Porres Church, Toledo, OH as well as the director of St Raphael Syro-Malabar Mission of Cleveland, OH. Specialized in Moral Theology and Social Ethics, he teaches Medical Ethics and allied courses in the Religious Studies department at Mercy College of Ohio, Toledo, OH, and Moral Theology in the graduate school at Lourdes University, Sylvania, OH, USA. Email: karekattraphy@yahoo.in

References

Albert R. Jonsen, A Short History of Medical Ethics, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plastic_surgery&oldid=709941930 (Retrieved March 13, 2016).

John Paul Slosar, “Abortion and Maternal-Fetal Care,” in Health Care Ethics.

Jonsen, A Short History of Medical Ethics, Chapter 3: “Medical Ethics of India and China.”

Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891). The translation used herein is from Catholic Social Though: The Documentary Heritage, ed. David J. O’Brien & Thomas A. Shannon. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009.

Louis M. Savary. Teilhard de Chardin: The Divine Milieu Explained: Spirituality for the 21st Century, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007.

Michael R. Panicola, David M. Belde, John Paul Slosar, and Mark E. Repenshek, Health Care Ethics: Theological Foundations, Contemporary Issues and Controversial Cases, Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, 2007/11.

Owsei Temkin, Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians, Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1991.

Peter P. Budetti & Peggy McManus, “Assessing the Effectiveness of Neonatal Intensive Care,” Medical Care 20 (October 1982).

Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946.

St Basil, Ascetical Works, trans. M.M. Wagner, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1950.

Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, New York: Piccador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

Downloads

Published

2016-03-30

How to Cite

Karekatt, R. (2016). HEALTH AND HUMAN WELLNESS IN MODERN TIMES: HOSTAGE TO TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN INNOVATION. Asian Horizons, 10(01), 85–101. Retrieved from https://dvkjournals.in/index.php/ah/article/view/2024