Cartilage Repair
| Home | History | Non-Implant Therapy | Implant and Transplant Therapy | Carticel | MACI | Compare and Contrast | Demographics | Ethics | References |
Ethical Issues:
The lack of current ethical debates regarding shoulder repair reflect limited usage of treatments for implantation and repair. However, with the advances in medicine, it is possible that one day these treatments might not be restorative, but actual enhancements. So while fixing a volleyball player's arm is not ethically questioned right now, it may become an ethical debate in the future. Here are two things that ought to be considered for the future of shoulder surgery.
• Professional Players may be able to receive shoulder treatments in the future to enhance their rotator cuff muscles. While current steroid usage endangers a muscle's flexibility, certain bioartificial enhancements or tissue engineering treatments may increase elasticity. Pitchers, for example, would then be able to throw more innings with less muscle, ligament, and cartilage damage. A professional baseball team could play their best pitcher every game rather than the every-5th-game theory currently employed. Perhaps a volley ball player's spike would become more vicious leading to increased facial injuries, or a water polo player's shot now has an extra ten miles per hour because of the increased strength and flexibility. If these treatments become enhancements, a monitoring opperation by professional leagues would probably be considered.
• If this treatment becomes an enhancing agent, undoubtedly there will younger athletes seeking these enhancements out. The allowance of surgery on a collegiate, high school, or even middle school athlete is something that would need to be debated. Can a young individual compete with other youths with this increased edge? Ought doctors be allowed to perform this optional surgery on these youths to enhance their ability at this time? Currently, companies such as Genzyme and Verigen openly state that there is little clinical data on child implantations, but with increased injuries due to athletics in the youth this becomes an increasingly interesting question.
These ethical debates are not present thus far. However, in the future they could arise and these two issues will need to be addressed.
Created by: Blair Smith, Connie Lee, Daniel Solomon, Matthew Whitson and Stephanie Chang
Date last modified: 5/2/2004