Moral Issues in Medicine
Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements
Please use simple words since I am an international student. You could choose any 3 from the 16 questions that are listed. Each question 2 pages please . With MLA style please use only proper websites as references 7 at least and no books. Please let me know which 3 questions you choose. You could just indicate the number of the question above the page when answering them. Please make sure to fully answer the question I need the best quality possible with simple words.
Final Term Paper: Choose three of the following 16 questions to answer in 3-2 pages for each question indicate the number of the question above each page.
Consider the right to health care and the obligation to treat those who can’t afford to pay for it. Is this obligation a collective one to be born by the whole medical profession, or does it require every individual doctor to do at least some pro bono service at some time during their career? If there is a right to healthcare, how can we best make sure that those who face discrimination don’t get left out? How far do you think we should go in changing our basically private system into one which is more socialist? Is a multi-tiered system, which guarantees that the lowest tier is adequate, compatible with the demand that the right to health should be guaranteed to everyone? How should it be financed? Give reasons for holding your view.
Deal with the issues involved in the macro-allocation of healthcare resources. Do you think the present allocation is just or unjust? Why? Give an account of the various views on social justice and how each one determines what justice is. What are the pros and cons of each and which do you tend to agree with? Do you think a distributive or procedural justice approach is best? Why? When dealing with healthcare, do you think an approach, which provides it because it is a basic need or one which provides it as a means to guarantee equality of opportunity more promising? Give reasons for holding your view.
Deal with the arguments pro and con on public vs. private ways of managing healthcare allocation. Who should be responsible for providing healthcare, the individual, employer, or the society through the state? Should we mandate coverage or leave it voluntary? Should access to adequate healthcare be a right? Why has the A.M.A. and other special interests fought against socialized medicine? Are physicians right to continue to favor a private, free market approach to healthcare or should they switch to a system which guarantees universal access, particularly coming to the rescue of the least well-off, not just those on welfare but also the working poor who usually don’t have healthcare benefits through their employer? Are doctors letting their patients down by opposing universal coverage? Are they putting their own interests first by not only protecting their own income but also their professional autonomy, which includes the power to determine the fees? Should we regard the talents and abilities of health-care professionals as common assets to be used for the benefit of society as a whole or as marketable skills belonging the the providers as individuals to dispose of as they see fit? Give reasons for holding your view.
Deal with how we should allocate scarce medical resources, such as expensive operations, artificial and natural organs, life support and diagnostic machines, etc. Examine the utilitarian and Kantian approaches on this issue and the pros and cons of each. Do you believe that some sort of age-based rationing will be necessary and what should be the guidelines determining what should be rationed and who will lose out? Would it be better for the government to make such decisions or allow privately owned insurance companies to do so? On organs, should we continue to rely on voluntary donors or switch to a system in which one is presumed to have given permission unless one has specifically stated otherwise? Would you resent having your organs used without your specific permission once brain dead, or should the interests of the living always take precedence over those of the dead? Give reasons for holding your view.
Deal with the broad issue of social justice and access to healthcare. Should we be concerned that given lack of universal coverage, that if we in America legalize euthanasia or cloning, the net effect will be bad for society as a whole because the burden and promise will be spread around unequally? Should we make sure we get universal access first before making such changes to taboos and traditional restrictions concerning the medical professions, because it could have potentially unfair or even genocidal effects? Give reasons for holding your view.
Should doctors and other healthcare professional be used mainly as a social asset to achieve broad social goals like public health and screening? Or should they be regarded mainly as private practitioners who are free to sell their trained expertise to the highest bidder? Consider the investment in money and effort doctors make to educate themselves. Should they have a sense of entitlement or regard themselves as public servants because they provide something vitally needed and that not everyone can provide? Should we take over the expense of training them, if we were to develop such socially obligatory expectations? If we in America move toward universal access and expect doctors to play their role in such a system, how can we provide the incentives necessary to motivate people to go through the rigorous training involved? Give reasons for holding your view.
Deal with the main pros and cons on the abortion debate and spell out what the pro-life, pro-choice and more moderate positions are. Then state your own view on this and justify and defend it from likely criticisms. Is there a slippery slope effect here from allowing abortions? Will society lose respect for life and the medical profession be changed for the worse, or is this fear over-stated? What about the image and respect for the medical professions? Will they suffer because they continue to perform legal abortions? Give reasons for holding your view.
Deal with the issue of whether all doctors should be trained, able and willing to provide abortion services, or whether doctor’s should have a right to be conscientious objectors when it comes to abortion. What about pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills or morning after pills? Should filling such prescriptions be expected of them as pharmacists, or so they too have the right to be conscientious objectors? What of referring such patients to a collegue who doesn’t find it morally problematic? Give reasons for holding your view.
What of therapeutic abortions, which take place after test have indicated a risk of birth defects or genetic diseases? How should the counseling be done in such cases? Is it really always best to abort than to give birth to a defective child? What if the test shows only a statistical correlation between an abnormal chromosome and an actual genetic disease? Should the choice be left to the mother or the parents, and how much should an attempt be made to influence them to be socially responsible in such cases? Give reasons for holding your view.
Should a doctor regard himself as having two patients when women come for prenatal care or does his fidelity remain mainly with the woman, unless she decides to put a greater priority on the unborn’s health and life than on her own? What if she continues to smoke, drink, or do other things which put the fetus at risk and make it more likely that its future life after birth will be compromised? Should coercion in such case be considered to force her to be more responsible to the child she is carrying to term, or should she be educated and counseled on the likely consequences of her behavior and allowed to choose for herself? What of the extreme case of fetuses damaged by a crack addicted mother, so that they will later have learning disabilities? Would it be better to urge her to abort than carry to term? What if she repeatedly abuses the right to an abortion? Give reasons for holding your view.
When infertile couples seek treatments, and they fail, should in vitro fertilization and surrogacy be legally available as an option, so that at least one member of the couple can have a child of his/her own? What is both morally and legally problematic about this? Could scarce medical resources and personnel be better spent on other things than catering to the needs of such couples? What of surrogate motherhood in general? Is this a good thing that we should encourage? Now that test tube babies are common place, we have gotten used to it. Will the same thing happen with other reproductive technologies like cloning? Give reasons for holding your view.
Give an account of the pros and cons on the euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide issue. Particularly, deal with the sanctity of life and slippery slope arguments on the con side, and the right to self-determination and the claim that sufficient regulation can prevent the slippery slope effects on the pro side. Take sides in this controversy. If Massachusetts were to vote on an Oregon-style law which would allow doctor-assisted suicide under carefully regulated conditions, would you vote for it or not? Give reasons for holding your view.
Deal with the distinctions between active/passive and voluntary/involuntary euthanasia, and differentiate them form both doctor-assisted suicide and refusal of life-sustaining treatment. Is there a morally significant difference to you between letting die by letting nature take its course and killing a patient if they are bound to die very soon anyway? What of the use of morphine drips? Is it active euthanasia if upping the dosage leads to cessation of breathing and heartbeat? Should the medical profession admit that this is active euthanasia or continue to regard it as mainly pain relief when dying? Do we have de facto legalized active euthanasia if using morphine drips routinely kills people? Give reasons for holding your view.
Deal with the use of either active or passive euthanasia in the case of severely defective newborns. Is it less cruel to give such a child a lethal injection than to allow it to die after 9-10 days of withdrawing food and hydration? If the child is going to die sooner or later anyway, which is morally preferable? Should active euthanasia be a legal option open to doctors and the parents or remain illegal in these types of cases? Give reasons for holding your view.
Deal with hospice care and how it is different from traditional care as well as euthanasia. What do you think of doctors not treating treatable conditions like having pneumonia in order to hasten death, while keeping the patient as free from pain as possible while they are dying? Is this preferable for many terminal patients compared with both aggressive treatment to keep them alive and actual euthanasia? Give reasons for holding your view.
Deal with DNR orders and advance directives, proxy agreements, and living wills. Is it better to have terminal patients put down in writing what their own wishes are in order to prevent the situation presented by Terry Schiavo. What did you think about politicians attempting to intervene to prevent a court order from being carried through to remove her feeding tube, after the courts had decided it was in her best interest and accordance with her next of kin’s wishes, ie. her husband’s? Do you think that, If she had done such advanced paper work, it might have been less problematic? Why? What lesson should we draw from this case? Should these documents be legally binding or only advisory? Give reasons for holding your view.
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