ENGL 147N Discussion 1 Annotations

Point: Assisted Suicide is Unnecessary

This article is explaining why assisted suicide is unnecessary. It goes into detail about why we should not assume these people who are extremely sick and in pain are at a good place mentally to be making those decisions to end their life. Sometimes when someone is depressed, they do not think rationally. Explains a lot of doctors do not feel comfortable with the thought of assisted suicide. If a person chooses not to eat or not to get out of bed that is their choice and will make their death come sooner so why add a reason to end their life even sooner. There are already many documents in place to explain who decides for a patient in time that they cannot or certain ways they would like certain situations handled in an event where they are unable. The author is named John Pearson. Although he comes up with multiple great points against assisted suicide, he is not a professional and is writing comes from research he has done himself and his opinion. This does not make him very credible. There is not much information on John Pearson, but it seems he is a student and has done all his research himself.

The source relates to my thesis by showing there are already so many things in place and the patient is already able to make decisions on moving forward with their plan of care that some people may see the thought of assisted suicide unnecessary. There are many reasons for a person to end their life if they felt they had to and why involve the doctors who take a vow to try their hardest to save peoples lives. When writing my pro-con paper this article helps give me some ideas on why some medical professionals find assisted suicide unnecessary.

Pearson,J. (2016, September 30). Point: Assisted Suicide is unnecessary. Retrieved from
https://webbebscohostcom.chamberlainuniversity.idm.oclc.org/pov/detail/detail?vid=5&sid=3965031bc1fb7281be9f%40sessionmgr101&bdata=JnNpdGU9cG92LWxpdmU%3d#AN=12421316&db=pwh

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I’ve heard this argument a lot in recent years. Because palliative care has become so much better and there is such a focus on that and hospice, many argue that assisted suicide should not be an option.

I had not heard the term palliative care until about 8 or 9 years ago. My cousin’s wife’s twin sister was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of 29. She lived out the last couple of months of her life in palliative care, where she played her guitar and did lots of writing, while also taking visits from friends and family. I am guessing her pain was closely watched and managed with some intense drugs. It was beyond sad to see that happen to someone so young, but her family was all happy for the time they got to spend with her.

I never thought about it that way until doing research on con articles. Palliative care and hospice are giving that patient the option to stop treatment and just be comfortable until the end of their life. I have always had a heart for hospice and will be starting a new job with hospice in a couple weeks. I am nervous for the emotional aspect of hospice but so excited to be a persons hand to hold at their most vulnerable time. I love that people have that option to make those choices for themselves and stop treatment. If you think about it when stopping treatment that leads to dying faster so in a way what is the point of the assisted suicide unless their pain is so uncontrollable and even a few weeks or months is too long to live like that.

I really think people who work in hospice are doing incredibly important work. I think you have to have a true gift to do that kind of work. As you said, the emotional aspect of it has to be difficult. My cousin works in hospice. He is so compassionate, and I don’t know if this is even allowed or not, but he told me that one of his patients just wanted to have a few beers on his front porch with him, so he obliged. They sat outside, drank a couple of beers, and told stories. Maybe he’s not supposed to do that, but I thought that was pretty cool, personally. The man was dying, and he helped him to feel like he wasn’t for a little while.

I wish you the best with the new job. I bet it changes you. I think it’s a privilege to help people in the last days of their lives. I would consider it an honor to be there for someone as they make that transition. I believe in the afterlife, so I think your job is very special – you will help people make leave this earth peacefully. I hope you will see it that way. 🙂

Assisted suicide is necessary because it reinforces the right to liberty. Every person should have the right to decide when to end his/her life. In a context in which individuals are suffering from an illness in the terminal phase, it is not optimal to prohibit assisted suicide; it does not make sense because patients have not any probability of recovering from their illnesses. Moreover, patients are suffering inevitably and, the options they have to mitigate their pain and depression are limited. Assisted suicide has benefits over the people who utilize this resource and over their families and loved ones because it finalizes the sense of uncertainty and the economic spending they have to assume, which generates other types of direct and indirect issues that can be prevented with the legalization of assisted suicide (Emanuel, 1999). Assisted suicide is not an issue, it is a necessity to reinforce the right that people have to decide over their lives.

References

Emanuel, E. J. (1999). What Is the Great Benefit of Legalizing Euthanasia or Physican-Assisted Suicide?. Ethics, 109(3), 629-642.

The study I reviewed looked at recreational marijuana use and if it led to the use of opioid drug misuse. To determine this the state prescription drug utilization records were obtained for Medicaid users from eight states and Washington D.C. The study reviewed states with the legalization of marijuana to see if there was a link between recreational use of marijuana and opioid use. The study found that with the legalization of marijuana there was some decrease in opioid use in states that had legalized medical use. This strengthens my thesis statement about the benefit of the legalization of medical marijuana.

I found this research to be reliable. It is peer-reviewed and authored by multiple researchers from prestigious accredited universities.

References

Shi, Y., Liang, D., Bao, Y., An, R., Wallace, M. S., & Grant, I. (2019,). January 1. Elsevier, 194, 13-19. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2018.09.016

Wow. I bet that is horrific to witness! I cannot imagine. I know opoid addiction is such a big problem right now. As a young person, in high school, I was so afraid to try any drug that can kill you the first time you take it! Back then, the drug of choice for many friends was Ecstasy. I remember friends taking it and having really bad trips. I never tried it, because their stories were scary to me. I had no desire to have frightening hallucinations. I was sure I’d die if I tried it.

I did use marijuana a handful of times, and it simply made me feel really peaceful and sleepy. I wasn’t crazy about it, because I felt tired and in slow-motion. I preferred to drink if I was going to do something. Of course, I shouldn’t have been doing any of that stuff, but I much preferred drinking to smoking a joint.

I have witnessed a couple of people have bad reactions to marijuana. I always thought of it as a harmless drug, and I still feel that it’s no worse than alcohol (I know more people who have had major life issues because of alcoholism than I do because of marijuana); however, after witnessing the bad reactions, I have to say that some people really should not smoke marijuana. The level of paranoia I witnessed was shocking. Scary. I wonder what the statistics are on people having bad reactions to weed…?

This is a very interesting topic, and one I haven’t spent much time really considering. My father has a medical marijuana card, and recently my oldest son asked me about marijuana and if it’s bad. I gave a very political answer, stating that it was legal to use in some states, while in others it was only legal in special situations, and did my best to explain that. I told him at the end of the day, it is still a drug and one that probably shouldn’t be used unless there was a reason for it, similar to how you don’t take an antibiotic unless you need it. He seemed to accept this answer. My sister struggled with addiction for many years. She even spent some time in jail as a result of her struggles. And I know many people who have struggled with alcoholism. I have witnessed first hand the dangers of alcohol withdrawal when following the CIWA protocol at work. It does make you stop and think why some substances are legal and others are not, when in reality, they all come with their own set of dangers.

I reviewed an article in which the effects of the legalization of marijuana were analyzed. In the mentioned article, it was explained that the legalization of marihuana was functional to the reduction of prices of the mentioned drug. In addition, in economic terms, the reduction of prices of any economic goods or services causes an increase in the consumption rate of them (Bretteville-Jensen, 2009). The deregulation of marijuana influences the consumer’s behavior and perception of the drug. Usually, when marijuana is legalized, consumers perceive it as a safer substance and, consequently, marijuana consumption rate increases significantly (Miller, Rosenman, & Cowan, 2017). That is why the legalization of marijuana is not the best strategy to reduce its consumption; nevertheless, it is beneficial for consumers because, when marijuana is integrated into the market, the State offers protection strategies to guarantee quality standards for the products that are derived from the mentioned drug. In other words, the legalization of marijuana helps to protect consumers’ health.

References

Bretteville-Jensen, A. L. (2006). To legalize or not to legalize? Economic approaches to the decriminalization of drugs. Substance use & misuse, 41(4), 555-565.

Miller, A. M., Rosenman, R., & Cowan, B. W. (2017). Recreational marijuana legalization and college student use: Early evidence. SSM-population health, 3, 649-657.

I choose to talk about organ donation.

Even though a person may have a desire to donate their organs in a case of death, the procedure of doing it might be challenged with numerous obstacles and the perspectives of family members. David M. Shaw defines one of the obstacles as vagueness, which is present in the consent to organ donation. One of the examples of such vagueness is the pathways of the process of donation; the author claims that “there are two main donation pathways: donation after brain death (DBD) and donation after circulatory death (DCD)” (Shaw, 2017, p. 426). In other words, the process of donation can happen after the stop of heart function or after the stop of brain function – two types of deaths, which are different in time. The difference in timing is frequently omitted by the potential donors or their family members, who may refuse to consent. The other family perspectives were reviewed by Ralph and co-authors (2014), who identified such obstacles as suspicion and fear, reactions to the death of a close person, the motifs, decisional conflicts, donor’s will, and vulnerability. Thus, the process of donation is associated with numerous obstacles and family perspectives.

In the first sentence, I attracted the attention by highlighting the contradiction between the desires of a patient and the challenges of donation procedure. One such challenge, the donation pathway, is defined in the quote that was used (Shaw, 2017). The quote gives the definitions to the types of death, after which donation is possible; the quote is used as these definitions are challenging to paraphrase (Shaw, 2017). At the same time, the list of family members’ perspectives, which is a paraphrase from the second source, was a more manageable task (Ralph et al., 2014). Turnitin helped me paraphrase the sentence by finding synonyms and highlighting the information relevant to the paper. In my opinion, paraphrasing is a more flexible tool that allows the writers to smoothly incorporate the relevant information in the piece of academic text.

References

Ralph, A., Chapman, J. R., Gillis, J., Craig, J. C., Butow, P., Howard, K., … Tong, A. (2014). Family Perspectives on Deceased Organ Donation: Thematic Synthesis of Qualitative Studies. American Journal of Transplantation, 14(4), 923–935.

Shaw, D.M. (2017). The consequences of vagueness in consent to organ donation. Bioethics, 31(6), 424-443.

The article I chose is on reasons not to use medications when treating a child for ADHD. The author is a psychologist practicing in Connecticut. She is board certified and a member of several associations in her field. Her credentials are clearly located at the end of the article, and a quick Google search of her name offers multiple links to similar information about her. The date is 2019, making it a current source. Overall, this is a credible source for the topic I am choosing to review.

The author goes into detail on five points of opposition to the use of ADHD medications. Medications have many side effects, which can be merely temporary annoyances, or more long lasting and difficult to deal with. Additionally, in one study, all the participants experienced at lease one negative side effect to medications. This suggests that it is extremely likely that adverse effects will occur (Hodge, 2019). These medications can cause changes in the brain, both structural and neurochemical, which can result in negative changes in behavior that continue even when medications are no longer being used (Hodge, 2019). These changes can also lead to addictive behavior, particularly in those who may be predisposed due to family history (Hodge, 2019).

ADHD can often be misdiagnosed, because symptoms can be similar to other childhood issues. Using alternative therapy approaches can reduce the risk of treating a child with potentially harmful medications, when they are actually suffering from learning disabilities, depression, autism, sensory processing issues, or nutritional deficits (Hodge, 2019). There are several alternative therapies that can greatly impact a child’s behavior. Neurofeedback and dietary are two such examples. In addition, children and parents can benefit from behavior therapy. Skills such as how to study, or how to get along with other do not always come naturally. Often it is a matter of properly guiding and teaching children the skills they need to succeed (Hodge, 2019).

Hodge, R.C. (2019). 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Medicate Your Child With ADHD. Retrieved from: https://drroseann.com/5-reasons-to-not-medicate-adhd-in-children/Links to an external site.

The topic I researched was the dangers of medicating children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD is defined as ” a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by difficulties in executive functions, emotional dysregulation, and impulse control, that result in distractibility, inattention, impulsivity, and in some cases hyperactivity” (March & Cabrera, 2018). Due to the impulsivity, children with ADHD are at an increased risk for substance abuse. This is a problem when the medications used to treat ADHD in children are psychostimulant drugs.

Most people are aware of the dangers of taking drugs like Adderall when there is no ADHD diagnosis. A percentage of College students who take these medications become chemically dependent on them to function. According to March and Cabrera, evidence shows in both patients with substance abuse disorder, and in patients diagnosed with ADHD, that there is a lack of dopamine in the reward system of the brain. (March & Cabrera, 2018) Using medications such as Adderall, even if prescribed, can place children with ADHD at a risk for substance abuse. Research is still ongoing regarding the long term effects that this will bring to children taking psychostimulants as treatment for ADHD. Due to the link between substance abuse and ADHD, parents are apprehensive to medicate their child with psychostimulants.

Reference:

March, P., & Cabrera, G. (2018, December 7). Substance Abuse and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (D. Pravikoff, Ed.). https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.chamberlainuniversity.idm.oclc.org/eds/detail/detail?vid=16&sid=c8b118ac-44db-4533-ad49-0eb07b3bd6b3%40sdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3D%3D#AN=T701506&db=nup

ENGL 147N Discussion 1 Annotations