Topic 23-Treatment Of Disease

Question 0

Disease can be treated by developing medical drugs or by other therapies. There are various issues surrounding drug treatments name 3 of these:

Answer 0

1) Drug treatments usually have side-effects which can be serious.
2) Drugs require large scale, rigorous testing. This is expensive and takes a long time. The testing involves risk management, weighing the benefits against any drawbacks.
3) Many drugs are very expensive. Health service administrators have limited budgets and have no make decisions about wether drug treatment are affordable and cost-effective.

Question 1

Scientist play a major role in keeping people healthy. Name 3 ways they do this:

Answer 1

1) Finding way to cure and test diseases and cures.
2) Preventing disease by developing and administering vaccines.
3) Discovering the causes of disease and advising people how to prevent them.

Question 2

What are ethical issues involved treating patients with drugs are outlined below:

Answer 2

1) Some expensive drugs do not cure, but prolong life. Buying this drug to treat patients may cause other treatment programmes or facilities to be cut back.
2) Some drugs are only effective in a small number of people. Treating people who turn out to be unaffected by the drug would waste a lot of money.
3) Sometimes a new drug is only slightly more effective than an old one, but far more expensive.

Question 3

Name 3 arguments against animal testing:

Answer 3

1) It causes suffering I the animals.
2) The benefits to humans are not proven. The animals are not humans and so their reactions to drugs may be different.
3) There are alternative methods that could be used.

Question 4

Name 2 arguments that are for animal testing:

Answer 4

1) Licensed scientists always try to minimise any suffering to the animals, which are generally well looked after.
2) The research brings benefits to humans which cannot be obtained by other methods.

Question 5

What are alternatives to animal testing

:

Answer 5

1) Using computers models
2) Testing on issues cultures of animal cells rather than whole animals.
3) Theoretical and statistical studies of diseases in humans could avoid some of the animals tests.