The right to assisted suicide is a significant topic that concerns people all over the United States. The debates go back and forth about whether a dying patient has the right to die with the assistance of a physician. Some are against it because of religious and moral reasons. Others are for it because of their compassion and respect for the dying. Physicians are also divided on the issue. They differ where they place the line that separates relief from dying--and killing. For many the main concern with assisted suicide lies with the competence of the terminally ill. Many terminally ill patients who are in the final stages of their lives have requested doctors to aid them in exercising active euthanasia. It is sad to realize that these people are in great agony and that to them the only hope of bringing that agony to a halt is through assisted suicide.When people see the word euthanasia, they see the meaning of the word in two different lights. Euthanasia for some carries a negative connotation; it is the same as murder. For others, however, euthanasia is the act of putting someone to death painlessly, or allowing a person suffering from an incurable and painful disease or condition to die by withholding extreme medical measures. But after studying both sides of the issue, a compassionate individual must conclude that competent terminal patients should be given the right to assisted suicide in order to end their suffering, reduce the damaging financial effects of hospital care on their families, and preserve the individual right of people to determine their own fate. Medical technology today has achieved remarkable feats in prolonging the lives of human beings. Respirators can support a patient's failin... ... middle of paper ... ...e terminally ill. This right would allow them to leave this earth with dignity, save their families from financial ruin, and relieve them of insufferable pain. To give competent, terminally-ill adults this necessary right is to give them the autonomy to close the book on a life well-lived. Works Cited Barnard, Christaan. Good Life/Good Death. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1980. Beck, Joan. "Answers to Right-to-Die Questions Hard."Houston Chronicle 16 Mar. 1996, late ed.: 36. Cotton, Paul. "Medicine's Position Is Both Pivotal And Precarious In Assisted Suicide Debate." The Journal of the American Association 1 Feb. 1995: 363-64. Dworkin, Ronald. Life's Dominion. New York: Knopf, 1993. Smith, Cheryl. "Should Active Euthanasia Be Legalized: Yes." American Bar Association Journal April 1993. Rpt. in CQ Researcher 5.1 (1995): 409.
Dworkin, Gerald. " The Nature of Medicine." Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide: For and Against. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
Between 1947 and 1971, even if you did not practice your religion it was still expected that you would identify yourself as being a part of your/ your family’s religion. In 1947 the ‘no religion’ category made up only 0.3% of religious affiliation in Australia. A change in social values and attitudes has since seen a dramatic increase in people identifying as belonging to ‘no religion’ with the category reaching 6.7% in 1971, “The specific instruction 'if no religion, write none' included in the 1971 Census saw an increase in this response from 0.8% in the previous Census to 6.7%.”(Australian Social Trends, 2013). The chart below is a visual representation of the growth in the ‘no religion’ category.(sourced from Australian Social Trends, 2013).
‘The way’ is cluttered with constant imagery of contradictory views which are both compelling and insightful, through which we are taken on a journey, our final destination being the true meaning of life. In a world where we are all yearning for the meaning for life, true harmony and real balance it is no surprise that the Tao Te Ching is a very haunting piece of literature that holds the reader in an almost trans like state of mind as it attempts to portray the way to accomplish the above.
My views about Ehrenreich’s novel that it was filled with educational details of minimum wage job occurrences. The author captures concrete memories of her experiences of several job positions. Working in several jobs of hard manual labor is exhausting for the mind and body. The job experiments involving all these jobs to see what many struggling people endure on a daily basis. I thought the experiments resulted in average, and intolerable work environments. Working one or two jobs was needed to survive and pay for necessities. From my perspective, it was a useful trial to show readers the hardships people of every culture deal with constantly.
“My love, she keeps me warm.” Without context, these song lyrics have no impact or power behind them. However, if told that these words were sung by a female vocalist, and preceded by the lyrics “I can’t change, even if it tried, even if I wanted to,” suddenly the words have meaning as a woman sings of her love for another woman (Haggerty, Lewis, Lambert, 2102). These lyrics come from the 2012 song “Same Love” by Macklemore with Ryan Lewis and featuring Mary Lambert. In the song “Same Love,” Macklemore raises his voice against the issues of discrimination, gay rights, and marriage equality that we see in today's era. He uses two fallacies in the song, but Macklemore’s use of the three rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos in his song “Same Love,” have a great level of success in proving the importance of gay rights and marriage equality.
Although born into a politically prominent family on May 29, John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s path to presidential popularity had begun way before he was born. In 1849, JFK’s great grandfather emigrated from Ireland to Boston and worked for minimum wage for all of his life that he resided in America (Historic World Leaders). Starting with JFK’s grandfather, Patrick Joseph (P.J.) Kennedy, the life of a Kennedy, from birth to death, revolved around ideas of the want for power and stature. His grandfather, born into a poor family, worked his way up from poverty “to successes in the saloon and liquor-import businesses, branched out into banking, and became a backroom political operator” (Historic World Leaders) becoming a man of prestige just as his family had hoped. Blossoming from a business partnership, PJ Kennedy’s son, Joseph married Rose Fitzgerald in 1914. Joseph Kennedy was quite ...
Having medical benefits mean the personal cost that the individual have pay for surgical and medical expenses would be at a percentage. Having health insurance will sometimes give you a reimbursement for from health insurance companies. Health insurance benefits are provided by the state and employers.
The mission statement of the HRC defines the group as a voice for the gay and lesbian community, with aims of lobbying Congress, electing fair officials, and educating the public on gay and lesbian issues. These goals are indeed noble and legitimate, but they often put the group against many right-wing organizations, especially conservative Christian groups which condemn homosexuality in all forms. Since the segment of the populatio...
As patients come closer to the end of their lives, certain organs stop performing as well as they use to. People are unable to do simple tasks like putting on clothes, going to the restroom without assistance, eat on our own, and sometimes even breathe without the help of a machine. Needing to depend on someone for everything suddenly brings feelings of helplessness much like an infant feels. It is easy to see why some patients with terminal illnesses would seek any type of relief from this hardship, even if that relief is suicide. Euthanasia or assisted suicide is where a physician would give a patient an aid in dying. “Assisted suicide is a controversial medical and ethical issue based on the question of whether, in certain situations, Medical practioners should be allowed to help patients actively determine the time and circumstances of their death” (Lee). “Arguments for and against assisted suicide (sometimes called the “right to die” debate) are complicated by the fact that they come from very many different points of view: medical issues, ethical issues, legal issues, religious issues, and social issues all play a part in shaping people’s opinions on the subject” (Lee). Euthanasia should not be legalized because it is considered murder, it goes against physicians’ Hippocratic Oath, violates the Controlled
First, the legalization of marijuana would have a tremendous economic impact. Since “marijuana is thought to be the second most profitable cash crop in the United States,” (Erb __) the government could control and then tax the drug if it is legal. This would mean that an enormous amount of money could be raised through the taxing of the drug. A recent study at Harvard estimated that “marijuana legalization would yield tax revenue of $2.4 billion dollars annually if marijuana were taxed like all other goods and $6.2 billion annually if marijuana were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol or tobacco” (Miron ____). The money raised from this tax could be used to improve schools, roads, and public parks. In the end, legalizing marijuana would be a great benefit to the economy.
Otitis Externa or swimmer's ear as it's commonly known, is an acute painful inflammatory disorder of the ear canal. This condition is characterized by a rapid onset of an external ear canal infection, that may extend distally to the pinna and proximal to the tympanic membrane resulting in otalgia, itching, canal edema, erythema, and otorrhea that often occurs after swimming or a minor trauma from inadequate cleaning. This form of ear bacterial infection is often caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus pathogens and can affect individual of all ages (Schaefer, & Baugh,
Throughout the course of history, death and suffering have been a prominent topic of discussion among people everywhere. Scientists are constantly looking for ways to alleviate and/or cure the pain that comes with the process of dying. Treatments typically focus on pain management and quality of life, and include medication and various types of therapy. When traditional treatments are not able to eliminate pain and suffering or the promise of healing, patients will often consider euthanasia or assisted suicide. Assisted suicide occurs when a person is terminally ill and believes that their life is not worth living anymore. As a result of these thoughts and feelings, a physician or other person is enlisted to “assist” the patient in committing suicide. Typically this is done by administering a lethal overdose of a narcotic, antidepressant or sedative, or by combining drugs to create an adverse reaction and hasten the death of the sick patient. Though many people believe that assisted suicide is a quick and honorable way to end the sufferings of a person with a severe illness, it is, in fact, morally wrong. Assisted suicide is unethical because it takes away the value of a human life, it is murder, and it opens the door for coercion of the elderly and terminally ill to seek an untimely and premature death. Despite the common people’s beliefs, assisted suicide is wrong and shouldn’t be legalized.
Von Goethe, Johann W. “The Sorrows of Young Werther.” Romanticism. Ed. John B. Halsted. New . . York: Walker Publishing Company, 1969.
When one contemplates the concept of eugenics, few think of modern contraception and abortion when in reality they are one in the same. The American Eugenics Society, founded in 1923, proudly proclaimed that men with incurable “conditions” should be sterilized. However these conditions were often none that could be helped, such as, one’s intelligence, race, and social class (Schweikart and Allen 529-532). The purpose of the society was to create the perfect class of men; elite in all ways. Likewise, Margaret Sanger’s feminist, contraceptive movement was not originally founded with this purpose. It was marketed as a way to control the population and be merciful to those yet to be born, again determined also by race and intelligence. The similarities in purpose actually brought the two organizations together to form a “liberating movement” to “aid women” known today as Planned Parenthood (Schweikart and Allen 529-532). The name may sound harmless, but the movement hid a darker purpose, to wean out the lower and less educated in order to create a perfect class.
Janet Murray explores the virtual swamp of electronic media conventions in her chapter entitled “From Additive to Expressive Form,” in Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Electronic forms of expression are still in a sort of primordial ooze phase, still clinging on to the life forms that previously inhabited the area, but trying desperately to create an evolutionary creature that is nothing like what a tourist in the area may have seen. In this case, the entire world has access to this digital environment. Murray’s claim is that “digital environments are encyclopedic” (83), or rather that we have the world at our fingertips: