euthanasia

I had asked to speak at a debate in the society Im involved in in college. The debate was "this house would legialise euthanasia". I was for euthanasia but I decided to oppose the motion. Heres the speach I came up with...though I'd put it up here;







I’m not a religious person, I’m not a conservative person, I very much believe in live and let live... no pun intended. But I am a practical person.
Tonight, I’m going to try my best not to use the word “wrong”. I feel that my opinion of whether euthanasia is philosophically wrong or not is neither here nor there.
I will not go on about “playing god”- I’m a scientist, I love playing god, do it all the time.
Instead I’m going to try to convince you that while you may have you own philosophical views on euthanasia that is ethically irresponsible and completely impractical.
So I’m going to talk a little about the reasonable doubt involved, what euthanasia undermines in society and really try to challenge why anyone would agree with it

In law you convict someone of a crime when you think that it is beyond reasonable doubt that they are guilty. This is how it works. So I’m going to point out the reasonable doubt of certain aspects of euthanasia.
For instance, the very fact that the option to be euthanized is available, by the fact that you could get euthanized, would be a subconscious pressure to someone who feels they must do the “honourable thing” and stop being a burden. Can the prop prove that no one will feel guilted into opting for euthanasia? Can I prove that definitely someone will? No- but my way no one is killed.
Palliative care specialists report that requests to be euthanized are often used by patients to assess their worth and value to others, any positive response merely confirms their worst fears that they are not valued but given time and support they very often change their mind
If you have a will saying in the event that you are in a vegetative state you want to be euthanized, shouldn’t that be ok? No because it’s a will, as in “I suppose I will...” you cannot assume to know how you will feel after you have a stroke or are involved in a serious accident when your mind is fine but you just can’t move, and then you can’t tell anyone that you’ve changed your mind you don’t want to die! Is it just me or is that not the scariest concept?
The bottom line is there is too much risk. You can’t undo death. It is the ultimate finality

We don’t allow people with brain tumours to drive, because their mental abilities have been affected- but we can allow them to decide to end their life? We can physically restrain manically depressed being if they are trying to harm themselves. So we would have to have some sort of mental assessment of people requesting to be euthanized. Then who makes the final decision about whether the person is approved to be euthanized or not? One doctor? Two? Three? How can the opinion of three people-yes doctors are just people- hold enough weight to decide whether someone should die before they would naturally?
Our health service can’t support a system as complicated as this, it isn’t functioning as it is!
The legalisation of euthanasia would undermine so many things in our health service.
It undermines the fight, that unspoken rule that in a hospital they will do everything they can to make sure you get better. When you are dealing with a serious life-long illness the last thing anyone around you should be saying is that it’s ok to die. On the really tough times when you want to throw in the towel, no system or legislation should encourage you do so.
It would also undermine the financing and prevision of proper palliative care, as it stands we only have the hospice which receives minimal governmental help.
It would undermine research into medicines and therapies to improve the quality of life of people suffering from degenerative and life- long illnesses.
Think of the advances medicine has had in the past decade. It’s highly possible that many of illnesses will be much more bearable in just a matter of years – but the people who get euthanized won’t know because they are dead. You can undo death people!
So who’s at risk?
Ideally, euthanasia would be there for someone of sound mind who has decide they’ve had enough, But the same legislation would be used to abuse the society’s most vulnerable individuals! We don’t yet live in some sort of utopia where justice prevails, no unfortunaly we live in a society where there were 1840 cases of confirmed elder abuse cases last year. And that only that ones we know about. We live in a world where people do bad things like physically and emotionally abuse their elderly relatives. Organisers of the elder abuse hotline say the recession is the cause of a huge increase with elderly people subjected to more and more abuse from family members over issues such as money land and wills. The world is full of greedy, underhanded people. We can’t have something as powerful as a system of assisted suicides, not in this world, not yet.
Don’t you realise that a lot of us in this room will grow old. If bird flu or swine flu or mouse flu don’t kill us off while we’re young we will grow old, our immune systems will get weak of a lot of us will get diseases due to old age. So is it going to become some accepted thing that you hit 85 and get euthanized if you aren’t healthy? It could do; enough people do it and people will think its expected of them. I don’t want to live in a real life version of Logans run
If you don’t understand that reference you need to get out less
I think it’s funny in Europe; we have this really weird warped view on things. We tend to be in favour of euthanasia as a very modern progressive thing. We look at the death penalty and think no- that’s American and wrong we don’t like that. Now I’m not drawing a direct comparison, but can’t you see that they have the same risks?! While in an ideal world, and in some case, you can justify both but all it takes is one innocent person to be killed for the whole thing to not be worth it!
So I can justify someone of sound mind, completely sane who is suffering from a terrible illness not being allowed to choose to be euthanized , because the very fact that they could means someone vulnerable could also be euthanized, someone depressed or feeling guilty or someone pressured into it.
No system or safe guards could ever be foolproof. When humans are involved you can’t eliminate human error. Because of this euthanasia should not be legalised, and for the same reason equally neither should the death penalty. At the end of the day death is too final.
There is nothing simple about this, to look at it in the black and white terms of “you choose, you die” shows an appalling amount of irresponsibility and a narrow mindedness.
The only reason we aren’t have “this house would bring in better palliative care” is because that wouldn’t interest people. It’s easy to say you agree with euthanasia and avoid think about the old people being abused, avoid thinking about the hard issues like what happens when a child wants to be euthanized? You think euthanasia that’s edgy, I’m going to be radical and say I’m for it, because it’s easier then justifying why you are against it. But I’m asking now; to think about all the things that could go wrong, think about the value of life rather than the cost. Be radical and say no, I demand better palliative care, more counselling for people with illness and recognise that it isn’t as simple as we would like to think. Be radical and oppose