Robotic surgery is inherently one of the greatest technological breakthroughs that have improved the quality of life. Having understood how robotic surgery started including the legal and political issues that are associated with its existence, it is high time that some lights are shed on some of the ethical and moral implications that define its position in the contemporary society. In that regard, the core concern will be to review the measures that guide the presence of the technology in the society including whom to blame should things go wrong (Veruggio, Operto & Bekey, 2016). Notably, all emerging technologies are associated with specific moral and ethical concerns implying that robotic surgery is not an exception.
One of the ethical implications that are associated with robotic surgery is the consent of interfering with the natural law (Lin, Abney & Bekey, 2011). Consequently, robotic surgery has provided a pathway that can be used to save lives. That means that in as much as people are supposed to die at some point, robotic surgery tends to defy that law by prolonging lives. With robotic surgery, there is a high degree of accuracy in the provision of surgical services. Thus, it is reasonable for some groups of individuals to argue that instead of being submissive to the laws of nature, human beings have gone too far into manipulating the law to suit their needs (Lin, Abney & Bekey, 2011). As robotic surgery continues to evolve, its applications will also increase. That means that most surgical procedures will have the technology as an option in one way or another entering into the future.
From a deontological perspective, it is vital to focus on the rightness or wrongness of particular actions themselves rather than the associated consequences (Alder, 2013). Hence, it is logical to argue that the consent of using robotic surgery is ethical. The fundamental idea behind the launch or the technology was to create a lifesaving platform. The survival of human beings has been associated with a lot of challenges. For instance, some cancer disorders are essentially life threatening and consequently difficult to manage. Thus, as we evolve into the future, researchers and technologists are developing measures that can be used to lessen such burden implying that the action of using robots to perform surgeries is morally right.
Basing on teleological reasoning, an action can be described as either wrong or right basing on the goodness or badness of its consequences (Alder, 2013). Technology has been used in more than one occasion to transform lives. Consequently, robotic surgery has enabled healthcare institutions to attain a higher degree of accuracy in their surgical operations. Unlike human beings, the technology is not prone to errors. The figure below shows how a task that could be undertaken by many people can be handled single-handedly with the aid of a robot:
Although it is guided by human logic and ideas, once a robot has been programmed to perform a surgical operation, chances are that all the procedures and standards will be met (Satava, 2012). The consequence of this is that more lives can be saved. Therefore, it is reasonable to highlight that robotic surgery is morally and ethically for the better good of the society at hand as justified by its positive implications in the surgical world.
To sum up, it is imperatively evident that robotic surgery is morally and ethically right in all capacities. The primary idea behind the development of the technology was to improve the quality of life which has been attained (Satava, 2012). A majority of the surgical procedures that are done by robots are too complicated and can take a lot of time for people to conduct. However, it is equally important that people who program the robots should be held responsible for mistakes that can cause harm or injuries to the patient. By so doing, it will be easier to enforce ethics and morals in the use of the technology.
- Alder, G. S. (2013). Ethical issues in electronic performance monitoring: A consideration of deontological and teleological perspectives. Journal of Business Ethics, 17(7), 729-743.
- Lin, P., Abney, K., & Bekey, G. A. (2011). Robot ethics: the ethical and social implications of robotics. MIT press.
- Satava, R. M. (2012, December). Laparoscopic surgery, robots, and surgical simulation: moral and ethical issues. In Seminars in laparoscopic surgery (Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 230-238). Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
- Veruggio, G., Operto, F., & Bekey, G. (2016). Roboethics: Social and Ethical Implications. In Springer handbook of robotics (pp. 2135-2160). Springer International Publishing.
