There has been a large degree of controversy over certain medical practices dating back to abortion and beyond. One of the newest examples to arise is the idea that a medical center can perform a test that will give a person an estimate of how long they will live. The test is done by taking a blood sample and measuring the length of the telomeres, or protective caps, on the end of a person’s chromosomes. Generally, these protective strands of DNA are used to keep the chromosome from fusing with nearby pieces of DNA and mutating but they serve a dual-purpose. The second purpose is to keep the cell from deteriorating; every time the DNA replicates, a little piece of the telomere is lost. Telomere research has been a high priority in recent history due to its link to cancer. In a cancer cell, it is possible for the cell to lengthen its telomeres rendering it invulnerable to normal cell death and making the cancer cell almost invincible. This relates to life span because a person can only live as long as their cells. When telomeres begin to run out and crucial DNA is cut off of ones chromosomes organs and bodily functions begin to fail. Researchers are now able to test the length of someone’s telomeres and give an educated guess on how long they have before they experience cell failure and eventually death, but is this information a good thing?
Information concerning a persons death is a rather controversial issue. There are two opposing sides to knowing when you will die. There are obvious upsides and downsides to knowing the time of your death. The upsides would be being able to get your affairs in order or getting treatment to delay the process of death. The downside would be focusing on your dying day, being afraid of the results being wrong and suddenly dying. Another downside would be paranoia, as well as trying every way humanly possible to cheat something as natural as death. There are some religious groups who do not use science to lengthen their lives or cure them if they are sick. The same people who inhabit those religious groups would most likely also not want to use science to know when they are going to die. The possibilities would be endless, but the repercussions could be deadly.
People always wanted to know their death. But knowing their death date would never be helpful. Once, the people know their death date, they accept their death. However, there could be mistake with the test and get a wrong date or the miracle(or something like human will). If the person is positive and has a will to live, that person could survive or live longer than what they told. But once people start to do this test, people would give up on those and just accept the death. I don't know if this is good for people. Knowing death would be nice but not 100% helpful and nice.
ReplyDeleteI think Knowing time left till my death wouldn't be nice. If I know the exact date of my deatch, I won't be able to live longer than the date but knowing it will shorten my life. Basically people think negatively so knowing it will be stress to people not a source of better living-life or something. I think the attempts to know our death date since we born won't be great. However, it might be helpful to people who are facing death for let people around them ready.
ReplyDeleteScience would be developed to people think and live more positively but not for giving negative idea to living people. The word 'death' itself already negative enough so I think it wouldn't be used to people who are healthy and young now.
If I know my death date, on one hand, I may feel sad because I cannot live as long as I thought; on the other hand, I will plan my life well, and treasure everyday before my death day. If I can process my life as the plan, I won't regret when I am dying.
ReplyDeleteFor those people who have fatal disease, doctors can only tell the patients' family the death date to make sure the families can around the patient at that time. Families are easier to accept the face than patients, because although the families know the fact, they still can encourage the patients to be strong and have hope. However, once the patients know their death date, they probably will give up fighting with diseases, and wait that day hopeless. They will be full of sadness everyday till their death day.
While I don't necessarily disagree with this practice, I do think it could lead to several issues. These issues particularly pertain to the possible inaccuracy of the test. Assuming the test is accurate, a person could use it to their benefit-- planning their will and doing everything he or she wanted to in life. Problems arise, however, if the test is inaccurate. If a person thinks he is going to die but he donesn't, he wouldn't know what to do with his life, and would be uncertain and possibly even paranoid as to when he was going to die. While I don't believe that this practice should be stopped or banned because of its possible benefits to medicine, I do find it rather unnatural for a person to know when he or she is going to die.
ReplyDeleteI found this article is little complicated and controversial. Knowing the death date has pros and cons. However, I think that it has more disadvantages than advantages.Generally, life is a series of unexpected happenings. So, if people are able to know their last minute, they do not try living passionately. If predicting the death date can be used positively such as curing cancer and so one, it is really good. But, in my opinion, it affects negatively more often.
ReplyDeleteThis issue comes down to a person to person basis in my eyes. The pros and cons of knowing the date of your death is powerful knowledge, and I think that some people could handle that, and some could not. Regardless of what steps one tries to take, you can't cure mortality. So wasting money, worry and effort on trying to sustain yourself past a reasonable extent seems like fighting a losing battle. On the subject of refusing such knowledge on a religious basis, that concept seems laughably ignorant to me. That being said, I am far from a religious person, so my opinion is skewed.
ReplyDeleteI believe having this knowledge is a great option to have, although personally I would not care to know my death date. If someone knows when they're going to die, whenever they look towards their future and what they do in their everyday life, they will be overwhelmed with a sense of insignificance towards their actions. If you are older and want to find out this information to prepare yourself and loved ones, I believe that would be easier to cope with and probably a much better option than finding out at birth, given the availability of this knowledge. Cases will arise where this information is crucial towards the well-being of one's life, in which case utilizing this information will be necessary. For the religious groups that refuse to use science to better their health, it all comes down to personal beliefs and preferences. As for the general public, I would hope obtaining this knowledge for your own personal "gain" would not be utilized. It's nice to have this option available to us, but that doesn't mean we should use it.
ReplyDeleteKnowing the date of your death will in fact change your perspective on life (positively or negatively). Knowing when you will die may cause you to want to do things on your bucket list that you probably won't ever do if you didn't know you were going to die. The negative aspect behind knowing when you will die is if someone who knows they will die next week might just go into a bank and kill everyone there because he knows hes going to die anyways. Knowing the exact date that you will die isn't a concrete positive or negative thing it's all about how the person reacts to the news and what they do with their life after finding out.
ReplyDeleteI think knowing one’s death date is controversial, but I’m in little negative side of that. I think knowing when they're gonna die wouldn’t be helpful for people. Well, some people might want to know when their lives will end, and I also think it might be good for only unexpected death like car crash or some kinds of unexpected accidents because sometimes people do not have time to say goodbye to their family. However, if people know their own death time, there is huge mess in the world. I mean, if you were dead tomorrow, who wants to work hard or who wants follow the rules in the society. Moreover, I think life is more excited when we don’t know what’s come next in our lives. However, if people know about their death, many people easily give up whatever they are doing without passion.
ReplyDeleteI do not think people should know the day of your death. yes there are pros to it, such as getting everything you want to do in your life done, but there are also negatives. People are going to go crazy over knowing how manydays they have to live. It will begin to consume lives and have a terrible affect of people.
ReplyDeleteIt's only natural for someone to be afraid to die since all any person alive has known is life. There are many religious ideas of what happens after life, but there has never been anyone who was dead for a year and came back to tell everyone about it. Despite how long human beings have been around and been dying, we know nothing for certain about what comes after death. This leads then to the idea of at least knowing when you will die. I think, that if someone truly wants to have this test performed on them then it is their choice. I'm sure it's very controversial for many people because of the repercussions it could have, but this test is voluntary and any issues that follow are the responsibility of the person who asked to be tested. No one should call for this test to be banned because it's not forcing anyone to take it. It's a simple voluntary test that does not affect those who don't want to take it.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, knowing the date of your death can only be a hindrance. There is not a single positive presented in my opinion. Knowing when you will die leads to unneeded dis-stress. That energy could be used much more appropriately if given a positive focus. Though it is an interesting prospect, it really only presents a wall that you waste your entire life looking at rather than enjoying yourself.
ReplyDeleteI do not particularly agree with this practice. I think it would prevent people from living their lives. It would be on a person's mind constantly. How would you be able to live knowing when you would die? And if you knew when, you would then wonder how it would happen. It would also be a concern as to how accurate this test really is. As an advancement in technology, there are probably still kinks that need worked out. In my opinion this practice is only a distressor because it would prevent a person from really living their life. Life should be enjoyed, not looked at as how many days left you have. If this practice continues that's exactly what life will become.
ReplyDeleteI think that knowing your death date would be terrifying. One would live day by day and just wait to die. Although people already do this, some people may regret this decision as they might live just to die. Day to day things may be overlooked since the person is only looking towards the future, whether its near or far. I believe it should be a personal decision and if one wants to know, they should be able to do what they can to learn. I do not, however, think it should be necessary for everyone to hold this information.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of knowing would be interesting. I personally would want to know just because most people don't die of general cell death. Telomeres can only tell us so much as far as disease and random chance go. It would be a cool fact that most likely wouldn't effect the way I live.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, knowing how long people can live is a wonderful idea. People are different, some may want to know when they gonna die while others may not. It just depends and you are not forced to know it. For me, I would like to know how long I can live because then I would be forced to plan ahead of time. I admit that I'm a lazy person and sometimes I just don't want to start because I know that I still have time and I can do it later. If I know my date of death, I would try to do all the things I want before my death then I wouldn't be regret when the time comes.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I don't want to know the exact time when I will die. First of all, I can arrange my lifetime base on my dream and my heart if I don't know when to die. On the contray, if I know my deadline, I maybe will arrange my time according to the length of my life. Besides, the worst thing is that the scared feeling will drive me crazy when I'm old. Can you imagine the feeling that death is close to you step by step?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, everybody has one life. How to keep this only one life to be more passion and more energy. We should relax our life. Do what you want to do in this only one experience. Don't think when is the exact time when I will be die.
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