Oregon's "Death With Dignity" Act should be a national law

So, having said her final goodbye to her husband, the wife is sitting in the departure lounge at Zurich Airport reading an English-language newspaper and she is aghast when she reads a headline: "CURE FOUND FOR THE DREADED LURGI". The dreaded lurgi was her recently-departed husband's condition. "Oh dear! " she exclaimed, "if only I hadn't agreed to help him commit suicide, we could have had a family together after all. Still, never mind, there's no point crying over spilt milk. On the plus side the house all belongs to me now, and, of course, the life insurance money will be of some comfort to me in my time of grief. " So, we can see that, in this case, a young man killed himself in vain, and it is similar to the case my opponent cited where a young woman "miraculously" recovered just before the doctors killed her because it would have been very different if she had taken the lethal dose a few weeks earlier. Then she too would have died needlessly. But what about the suicide clinics position in all this? In most countries in the developed world health care is funded by the state so that treatment provided according to need rather than the ability to pay. However, in the United States health care is run along commercial lines. With this being the case, suicide clinics will be in it for the profit and the primary responsibility of the clinics' management will be to the shareholders rather than the patients, creating an obvious potential for conflicts of interest. Let's look at the way estate agents are remunerated, for example. The more houses they sell, the more they get paid, so there is an obvious incentive for them not to be completely open and honest and about properties with potential buyers. It's a similar situation with used car salesmen, or investment bankers, or lawyers, or any amount of other professions where pay is performance-related. So will we see doctors in suicide clinics paid according to how many patients they kill? I hope not, but even so, there will be pressure on them to make money for the clinic. Let's now consider the position of a physician in a suicide clinic, Doctor Kindheart, who is very conscientious and who ensures that no patient takes their own life unless there is absolutely no possibility of recovery and their decision was wholly their own made without any undue influence from their family. However, this professional approach means that he assists many fewer patients to take their lives than his colleague, Doctor Snuff, who dispatches patients on a wholesale basis without due regard for medical ethics. One day the hospital manager calls Dr Kindheart into his office. "What the hell are you playing at, Kindheart? " the manager rants. "The Cohens are our best clients, we've euthanized three wealthy relatives of theirs so far this year but when you and Dr Snuff were asked to sign off the fourth, you refused to play ball. " The manager then takes out a report and reads from it. "Dr Snuff"s considered medical opinion," he says, "is that 'the patient is suffering from acute Allergic rhinitis with severe complications. It is only a matter of time before the patient dies and his life isn't worth living', while you have concluded that 'the patient is suffering from allergic rhinitis, more commonly known as hay fever, which is a treatable condition and not, in itself, fatal. The patient's condition is complicated by the fact that he is also clinically depressed and, therefore, is not in a fit state of mind to give his consent to be euthanized. ' What do you say to that, Kindheart? " "My report," replied Dr Kindheart, "was written in strict accordance with the guidelines and, furthermore, I consider it my professional duty to protect the interests of vulnerable patients from abuse of the system from families with vested interests in their deaths. In this case, as beneficiaries of the patient's estate and I concluded that the Cohen family had put their own financial interests ahead of the patient's best interests. I'm sorry, sir, but I firmly believe in upholding medical ethics. " "Screw medical ethics, Kindheart," raged the manager "I'm running a business here, not a charity, and unless you get your act together you'll be heading for the door. Now get out of my office and get back to what I pay you to do: that's kill patients. " That manager is not a very nice man, is he boys and girls? But ruthless businessmen operating in cut-throat commercial marketplaces where competition is fierce cannot afford to be nice and that's another reason why I affirm that assisted suicide should not be legalized in the United States. Thank you.