Euthanasia

In this round I only make contentions, then next round I present rebuttals and counter rebuttals. You'll remember that I said in the beginning debate that I'm advocating for voluntary euthanasia. I'll quote an article on euthanasia in the Netherlands to show you how the process of determining whether to end the patients life or not would occur: "A doctor must diagnose the illness as incurable and the patient must have full control of his or her mental faculties. The patient must voluntarily and repeatedly request the procedure, and another doctor must provide a written opinion agreeing with the diagnosis. After the death, a commission made up of a doctor, a jurist and an ethical expert also are required to verify that the requirements for euthanasia have been met" [1] This seems like the most rational way to deal with patients who are suffering from incurable diseases. I'll show why now: Arguments: Euthanasia reduces pointless pain and suffering This is a pretty simple contention that should be obvious to everyone. I'll put some premises up to prove this: P1: Not giving severely ill patients the choice of euthanasia forces them to live until the disease kills them off, unless an unexpected event occurs. P2: Many of the diseases that qualify a patient for Euthanasia are painful. C1: Many severely ill patients will suffer if they are forced to live until they die. P3: Legalizing euthanasia would allow patients to decide if they'd like to die early or live until they die of natural causes. C2: Legalizing Euthanasia reduces pain and suffering. It's a pretty simple argument. Many patients who are denied the right to euthanasia suffer from a variety of desperate attempts to get out of an agonizing life. Take Tony Nicklinson for example. He ended up starving himself for about a week in order to achieve death. [2] This is an example of people who suffer from not being able to kill themselves quickly and painlessly. This isn't to say that all patients will starve themselves to death, but they will still suffer from the disease they face. The economic impact of not legalizing euthanasia According to an article published by Time, the costs of keeping the terribly ill or crippled alive is extremely high:"One out of every four Medicare dollars, more than $125 billion, is spent on services for the 5% of beneficiaries in their last year of life. Yet even with Medicare or private insurance, you’re likely to face a big bill: A recent Mount Sinai School of Medicine study found that out-of-pocket expenses for Medicare recipients during the five years before their death averaged about $39,000 for individuals, $51,000 for couples, and up to $66,000 for people with long-term illnesses like Alzheimer’s. For more than 40% of these households, the bills exceeded their financial assets. Says study co-author Amy Kelley, an assistant professor of geriatrics: “Many people are shocked by the high out-of-pocket health care costs near the end of life.”" [3]This shows how not legalizing euthanasia can have a terrible impact on households who are losing money in order to keep someone who could actually want to die, alive. We're losing tons of money by not legalizing euthanasia. Non voluntary deaths will happen anyway A study by the New England Journal of Medicine discovered that: "0.4 percent of all euthanasia procedures were carried out without the patient’s explicit permission". [4] This shows that Euthanasia is mostly voluntary. People might point out that there's still deaths that happen without the patients permission, but this doesn't matter. A study done in 1991, about decade before Euthanasia was legalized in the , found that around 0.08% of all deaths were non voluntary acts of euthanasia. [1] This shows that there's going to be people who get away with killing patients without their permission regardless of whether we make it legal or not. We can conclude that it would be best for euthanasia to be legalized in the United States. It ends pointless suffering, and has an economic benefit In the next round I'll erect my rebuttals. (As the debate structure demands) Thanks for reading. Make good choices. Sources: [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com...[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk...[3] http://time.com...[4] http://ldysinger.stjohnsem.edu...