Jose Delgado
February 24, 1997
English 102
Mr. Vegh
The background
for this work is that the existing conflict over legalizing assisted suicides
and euthanasia could bring our values down and society apart. The problem is not legalizing or opposing to
it, the real problem is to find a way to care for the terminally ill. We have the responsibility to help the
terminally ill die in a decent way not killing them. If we don't have a policy or rule against this we are permitting doctors, like
Jack Kevorkian, to become famous for killing people. The claim for this work is that assisted
suicides and euthanasia should be illegal.
The Oregon Law would allow people to die
quicker and without dignity. We can see
that this is true in the story of the 30 year-old man that has leukemia. He had a 25 percent chance of survival if he
was medically treated; if not he was given a few months to live. When told this, the man wanted to suicide. At first he was scared but after talking with
the doctor he decided to take medical treatment and be closer to his family in
his final days. If this had happened
under the Oregon Law, he would have asked a doctor to assist him in suicide and
the doctor would have assisted him without any problem since he had no mental
illness.
Doctors can cause or hastened death without the
patient's request. This can be seen in
the Netherlands were a 30 year-old man who was H.I.V.-positive, but had no
symptoms and may not develop them for years, was helped to die. Probably the doctors didn't explain that even
if he had a terminal disease he could enjoy the rest of his life with his
family and friend that were about to lose him.
Doctors aren't trained to do this in medical
school and the public doesn't know better.
This is because doctors aren' t trained properly in the relief of pain
and discomfort in terminally ill patients.
And time should be devoted in medical schools to explain to the future
doctors that there are going to be some patients that they are not going to be
able to save but must address their needs.
Also the public hasn't been properly educated about the choices they
have at the end of their life.
The purpose of this work is to create a national
commission that would study the care of the terminally ill giving treatment to
the dying patients. Both people who
support and oppose euthanasia will be able to participate having in mind that
the real problem is the care for the terminally ill. This will help the people to make up their
minds and arrive at a consensus.
This work was written for a neutral but mature
audience. This work was printed in the
New York Times and deals with an important issue that some people may not
understand. The language of the work is
not confusing. The issue seen in the
argument is complicated and may not be suitable for everybody. People must understand the problem before
judging on it.
This work has a proposal argument since it
talks about making a commission to deal with the legalization problem of
euthanasia and assisted suicide. This
commission would be in charge of finding solutions for the problem of the care
of terminally ill patients and not the legalization of assisted suicides or
euthanasia. This commission would help
people understand the problem the legalization of euthanasia would bring to our
nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment