Through the Retention of Absolute Control over Certain Technical Procedures
This step is, in essence, the right to perform surgery and the right to prescribe drugs. In the life span of human beings, modern medicine can often determine life or death from the time of conception to old age through genetic counseling; abor- tion; surgery; and technological devices, such as computers, respirators, and life- support systems. Medicine has at its command drugs that can cure or kill—from antibiotics to the chemotherapeutic agents used to combat cancer. There are drugs to cause sleep or wakefulness, to increase or decrease the appetite, and to increase or decrease levels of energy. There are drugs to relieve depression and stimulate inter- est. (In the United States, those mood-altering drugs are consumed at a rate higher than the medications prescribed and used to treat specific diseases.) In addition, medicine can control what medications are available for legal consumption.
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