Tim's debate tournament: Euthanasia

My burden will be to prove that Euthanasia should not be legalized in the U. S. A. First, a definition of my own Palliative Care- medical treatment which reduces suffering but does not cure. I would also like to state that if I show a way for voluntary euthanasia to no longer be desired, then it is sufficient to negating the resolution and would give me the win. Now I would like to move on to my contentions as to why I think Euthanasia should remain illegal 1. Patients requesting Euthanasia are depressed 90% of terminally ill patients requesting suicide are suffering from depression (. http://www.nrlc.org...). Depression, not pain or other physical grief, causes the loss for the desire to live. My opponent claims self ownership must be maintained through Euthanasia, but are these people really themselves? Various studies suggest otherwise, seeing as depression is the villain holding the gun to their heads; is that the more ethical consideration? Euthanizing a patient who is obviously under severe depression? This is debilitating to them, like a cloud over their judgement. "Should" we turn a blind eye and euthanize them anyway? Or should we focus our efforts on curing their depression, and seeing where we can go from there. The readers may think how to deal with depression in these patients, or if you can. ". .. it [depression] is not inevitable. It is treatable in many cases. .. depression is managed with psycho therapeutic intervention, cognitive approaches, and behavioral interventions. " (. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...) Mostly, the depression can be treated just like anybody else suffereing from depression; the right combination of therapies and drugs, administered properly and openly, will cure depression in these patients. The American Journal of Psychiatry did a study on terminally ill patients, and found the following: "The striking feature of [our] results is that all of the patients who had either desired premature death or contemplated suicide were judged to be suffering from clinical depressive illness; that is, none of those patients who did not have clinical depression had thoughts of suicide or wished that death would come early" (. http://www.nrlc.org...) Once the patient is no longer depressed, there will not be thoughts of Euthanasia. Legalizing it would do nothing but provoke these depressed patients to go forward with Euthanasia while there are STILL options lying right in front of them; is that the more ethical consideration? No, not at all. Psychological and medical care, on top of compassionate social support from family and doctors are the appropriate responses to those terminally ill who wish to die. 2. Terminally ill diseases can be properly researched How great would it be to stop having to see family members go down to terminally ill diseases. For that matter, how long do we all want "terminally ill" diseases around? Medically, and as a societal whole, it is time to move on from these diseases by looking past the simple answer of "Euthanasia", and the only way to do that is to be at "ground zero". Right with a patient with one of these cancers or other diseases is the best way for doctors and researchers to gather conclusive data about the disease and develop progress, like we have before. There were times in the past that certain things were terminal that are no longer such; the plague, tuberculosis, measles, etc. We cured those by doing this exact thing; all of that would be impossible if you flushed it all down the drain with Euthanasia, which in turn would just create more terminal patients, more loved ones dieing needlessly, and more loss of critical data in the development of cures and vaccines for all kinds of these terminal diseases. "One-half of the cancer drugs in the last three years have made it to the market within six months. " (. http://leda.law.harvard.edu...) This shows progress; within six month we were able to market half of the drugs we were studying, meaning they all had breakthroughs in their research. We are starting to move forward, and we will keep moving forward in this progress if we keep Euthanasia off the minds of the people that are very pivotal in all of these research. ". .. that when people have an incurable illness, they should be given palliative care. " -Dr. Ravenscroft (. http://www.newint.org...) Palliative care is, as stated before, is a specific type of medical treatment that reduces the suffering in patients, and reduces any thoughts of Euthanasia, as stated before in many studies. In fact, once PC is administered, it becomes much easier to work with the patients and deal with other problems that may develop, such a depression, anxiety, or delirium. But pain isn't what drives most patients to the end. "Various studies suggest that pain is almost never the primary reason for requests for assisted suicide. " (. http://www.spiked-online.com...) It's the unwillingness to continue on with their current life, which correlates with depression, which I have already given an answer for. |Conclusion| Through multiple points, I show now sufficient ethical reason to legalize Euthanasia, and even show that most, if not all patients, if treated properly, would take back an assisted suicide request, thus negating the resolution. It's not in anyone's best interests to legalize Euthanasia, especially since at this point it would be suicide, but also because of the other lives that are being lost because of terminal diseases. According to Tommy Thompson, former Secretary of the Department of health and human services, "approximately 550,000 Americans are expected to die of cancer annually, translating into roughly 1,500 deaths per day, and a quarter of all deaths annually, caused by various forms of the destructive disease. " The only way we can slow this number down, and eventually stop it all together, is to keep the very vital hosts of such diseases now alive and well. It wouldn't be right for them to be Euthanized and set this research back god knows how long, or how many years, or how many Americans need to die because of it. Which is the more ethical consideration? The choice, at this point, is very clear and easy. Euthanasia should not be legalized.