Section 1: The Argument
1. Debate question: Should euthanasia be illegal due to malpractice?
2. Title: Euthanasia: We can live without it CNN. com 3. Publication and Date: 12:29 PM ET, Wed November 27, 2013 4. Form: Argument 5. Viewpoint: In the article, the author states the principal reason of euthanasia and how it came to be legal to relieve terminally ill adults and possibly children. Instead it is now being taken advantage of by doctors, nurses and patients. The assisted suicide is now being used to help the disabled, depressed, etc. The author's viewpoint in this article is to state and point out all of the negative outcomes and exploitations of assisted suicide. The author, Dr. Kevin Fitzpatrick, incorporates many studies, statistics, and cases that prove that practitioners of euthanasia in Belgium are misusing the drugs and their power as doctors.
6. Conclusion: At the end of the article, the statistics stated that euthanasia cases aren't
reported, which play a part with the corruption of the doctors. He also states many cases done by Dr. Wim Distelmans, a "protege" in euthanasia. With the cases Fitzpatrick proves the drugs are being used on the disabled instead of critical patients. He also asserts Sanchez 2 how doctors don't explain any other options for the patient, which makes the patient lack support. Therefore the article suggest that the euthanasia law in Belgium law is not safe and it should be stopped before they extend the law to children.
7. Reasons: The article statistically proved that euthanasia is unsafe because approximately
half (47%) of euthanasia deaths that have been done in Belgium are not reported, which makes it illegal. Deaths are also being carried out by nurses instead of doctors, and some deaths are even done without consent. Dr. Distelman, the "protege" in charge of doing many euthanasia cases, has ended the life of many people who weren't terminally ill. For example, Nancy/Nathan Verhelst was botched after many sex change operations, and he/she desired death by euthanasia. Distelman also killed Mark and Eddy Verbessem, 45-year-old twins who were deaf and wanted to end their life because their eyesight was soon going to fail them too. Another case was a woman Ann, who was anorexic and was seeing a psychiatrist that was helping her with her condition, but decided she wanted to end her life after being sexually abused by her psychiatrist.
Section 2: Critique Questions
1. Argument structure: The article is structured in sections: introduction, background
information, statistics/results and a conclusion at the end. The author takes a medical outtake on the situation and uses statistics and patient cases to prove the argument.
2. Ambiguous or prejudicial words: The author does not use any ambiguous word or
prejudicial words in the article. Only proven statistics and professional viewpoints were used.
3. Fallacies: The article does not contain any fallacies.
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