Health Challenges of the Future

Abstract

Health challenges of the future include: scientific advances and their social consequences, delivery of medical ser vices to all mankind and achievement of technical solutions to concrete problems. Social control of medicine-codified in the remote past—became less necessary in recent times. In many parts of the world, it is being reapplied in the delivery of health care and will be applied even more as scientific advances of awesome proportions raise ethical questions. There will be occasional conflicts between possible legal solutions and tradi tional duties of the physician. Potential conflicts exist in the application of eugenic programs, genetic alterations, popu lation control and ecological influences on life and death. New methods of health care delivery actually may require fewer, rather than more, physicians. Albeit relatively ne glected at the present time, the crippling diseases present more of a problem than do the increasingly controlled killer diseases. Solutions to all these problems should include the contributions of physicians; by virtue of their training, they are able to weigh alternatives more objectively than anyone trained in pure, natural or social sciences.