Testing of life expectancy: Risks Essay

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Introduction

When examining whether the blood test should be offered to people it must first be questioned whether it has any beneficial societal effect.

While it may be true that knowing when you are going to die enables a person to put their affairs in order that much sooner thus alleviating problems associated with a sudden or even a prolonged death the fact remains that knowing when you’re going to die happens to place an undue psychological burden on certain individuals resulting in not only foolhardy behavior but to an extent results in various case of reckless endangerment.

Apparently knowledge of one’s impending demise causes two distinct reactions in people, either a calm acceptance of the inevitable or a sudden form of social rebellion wherein knowing that you will not live longer makes a person lose their ability to actually care for proper societal rules and conventions.

In fact it has been noted, in various cases of people who have been informed that they have HIV, that their propensity for societal misconduct increases taking the form of either public displays of destructive behavior which at times culminates in various forms of criminal behavior.

It is based on this that it can be stated that, knowledge of one’s ascertained impending demise has the possibility of affecting a person’s psychological stability to such an extent that it results in socially destructive behavior due to the apparent “release” from the need to follow societal conventions and norms that the knowledge of death brings.

Origin of Socially Destructive Behavior

In one particular case of socially destructive behavior that quickly became an internet viral article was the case of a woman in India who upon learning that she contracted HIV from one of her sexual partners reacted by trying to infect as many men as she could by having unprotected sex with various sexual partners over the course of several years before she was caught.

It is estimated that as many as 150 men wound up as victims of this apparent destructive behavior which brings up the question of why would she do such a heinous act. Various answers have been given but the most widely accepted is the fact that knowledge of her impeding demise removed the apparent societal constraints that govern her behavior.

What must be understood is that everyone, in one form or another, conforms to certain societal behaviors and forms of constraint due to the need to get along with other people in a social setting and the fact that violations of widely accepted forms of behavior come with accompanying societal repercussions.

In cases though where people learn that their death is imminent the result is a sudden release from societal constraining behaviors due to their belief that since they’re going to die anyway they need not worry about the consequences of their actions.

While such behaviors are a rarity in society due to the unpredictability of death if a test accurately determining the age of death is ever created and offered to the people the likelihood of an increase in certain forms of socially destructive behavior as explained earlier will likely increase and thus presents itself as s detrimental rather beneficial process.

Why the Risks outweigh the Benefits

Certain benefits of knowing when you’re going to die come in the form of being able to properly say good-bye to your loved ones, being able to properly plan out your life till the “literal” end and enabling a person to live a more fulfilling life yet when taking into account the possibility of a spread of socially destructive behavior the apparent benefits don’t seem to out weigh the costs.

The fact is various studies have shown that people are far more likely to lean towards negative reactions rather than positive ones. This is due to the fact that each person has their own distinct level of intellectual maturity and as such the result of telling a person when they’re going to die is also varied as well.

While there may be cases where informing them results in them developing into a better person in order to accomplish more before their inevitable end comes statistics show that people who have been informed that they’re going to die within a predetermined time such as cancer patients or people who have been tested positive for virulent diseases usually react negatively to the news. It

is due to cases such as these that doctors are often reluctant to give out negative feedback to such patients since the resulting negative results are often result in destructive tendencies that have violent repercussions.

Conclusion

It is based on the various examples and statements presented that it can be said that knowledge of one’s ascertained impending demise has the resulting effect of changing a person’s psychological stability to such an extent that it results in socially destructive behavior.

This is apparently due to the “release” from being accountable to ones actions due to the inevitability of death which creates various negative societal results. Thus it can be seen that the even if the research is accurate the blood test should not be offered to people since resulting negative societal implications far outweigh the possible positive outcomes.

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Reference

IvyPanda. (2019, March 22). Testing of life expectancy: Risks. https://ivypanda.com/essays/testing-of-life-expectancy-risks/

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"Testing of life expectancy: Risks." IvyPanda, 22 Mar. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/testing-of-life-expectancy-risks/.

References

IvyPanda. (2019) 'Testing of life expectancy: Risks'. 22 March.

References

IvyPanda. 2019. "Testing of life expectancy: Risks." March 22, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/testing-of-life-expectancy-risks/.

1. IvyPanda. "Testing of life expectancy: Risks." March 22, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/testing-of-life-expectancy-risks/.


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IvyPanda. "Testing of life expectancy: Risks." March 22, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/testing-of-life-expectancy-risks/.

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