单项选择题
| Very old people do raise moral problems
for almost everyone who comes into contact with them. Their values—this can’t be
repeated too often—are not necessarily our values. Physical comfort, cleanness
and order are not necessarily the most important things for the very old people.
The social services from time to time find themselves faced with a flat with
decaying food covered by small worms, and an old person lying alone on bed,
taking no notice of the worms. Is it interfering with personal freedom to insist
that they go to live with .some of their relatives so that they might be taken
better care of Some social workers, the ones who clear up the worms, think we
are in danger of carrying this concept of personal freedom to the point where
serious risks are being taken with the health and safety of the old. Indeed, the old can be easily hurt or harmed. The body is like a car: it needs more mechanical maintenance as it gets older. You can carry this comparison right through to the provision of spare parts. Never forget that such operations are painful experience, however good the results. At what point should you cease to treat the old body Is it morally right to try to push off death by pursuing the development of drugs to excite the forgetful old mind and to activate (使......活动) the old body, knowing that it is designed to die You cannot ask doctors or scientists to decide, because so long as they can see the technical opportunities, they will feel bound to give them a try on the principle that while there’s life, there’s hope. When you talk to old people, however, you are forced to the conclusion that whether age is happy or unpleasant depends less on money or on health than it does on your ability to have fun. |