One of the consequences of improved medical care is that people are living longer and life expectancy is increasing. Do you think the advantageous of this development outweigh the disadvantages?

For centuries, human beings have been dreaming about an eternal life. With major improvement in the medical field, we now seem to make a closer step to it by the ability to expand our life expectancy. From my perspective, however, the merits of this are outnumbered by the drawbacks.

It is undeniable that a longer life benefits us in many senses. Firstly, it helps people to enjoy their living time better by having more time to spend with their beloved family, friends or spouses. They are also able to pursuit different interests which they might not have the chance to do due to uncured diseases. Secondly, the age group of labor is is widened to create stronger workforce with more experienced and skillful workers. This is because of the fact that in almost all fields, working capacities are enhanced with time besides concentration and effort. If a person cannot do jobs requiring physical strength, he or she can still contribute to the society by passing on accumulated wisdom as a teacher or trainer. A prolonged living period, therefore, means not only enjoyable life for individuals but also effective work for the society as a whole.

Despite aforementioned advantages, reality has proved that they cannot outweigh disadvantages due to a number of reason illustrated by the case of Japan as a typical example. The country is now facing serious lack of young people in manual or high technology work, and is under the pressure of importing labors from outside. This poses potential problems such as social disorders, distorted traditional values... In addition, the increasing number of the elderly has placed a burden on both young people and the government, as they live mostly on welfare and medical services. That top economy like Japan is now struggling hard to find a way out of this worrying matter indicates that vulnerable countries may be on the edge of worse suffering.

In conclusion, although many people support the idea that improvement in medical care blesses us with many benefits as a result of human longer life span, I remain firm that this is an alarming issue threatening the stability of every community.