26. November 2009 by student.

Remember Dr. Jack Kevorkian? Maybe you know him as Dr. Death. He put the debate over Physician Assisted Suicide and the right to die in the national spotlight. Just in case you don’t know who he is here’s a brief bio:

Dr. Jack Kevorkian has been known as “Dr. Death” since at least 1956, when he conducted a study photographing patients’ eyes as they died. Results established that blood vessels in the cornea contract and become invisible as the heart stops beating. In a 1958 paper, he suggested that death row inmates be euthanized, and their bodily organs harvested. In 1960, he proposed using condemned prisoners for medical experiments.

In 1989, a quadriplegic, too handicapped to kill himself, publicly asked for assistance, and Dr. Kevorkian began tinkering on a suicide machine. But a different patient — Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old with Alzheimer’s — was the first to test the device. It worked. Kevorkian then provided services to at least 45 and possibly more satisfied customers.

In 1997, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Americans who want to kill themselves — but are physically unable to do so — have no Constitutional right to end their lives. Kevorkian was sentenced to 10-25 years in prison, but was paroled in 2007, in failing health and nearing his own death.

There are two sides to this debate. Supporters claim that patients who are terminally ill and in severe pain can die with dignity. They administer the drugs themselves and die with limited pain and suffering. Opponents have several reasons for objecting. They claim that making an accurate terminal diagnosis can be difficult and the patient could beat the odds and survive; there are other underlying issues like depression that affect a person’s decision making; if the patients were treated better for pain they would suffer less and not want to die; finally that assisted suicide is a means of disposing of the elderly population.

In Oregon, it was made legal and contrary to the opponents beliefs, patient care and pain management has improved and hospice care has increased. The details of the law are below:

A terminally ill patient must obtain a terminal diagnosis from at least two physicians who declare that the patient has six months or less to live. The patient must be evaluated for depression and meet other qualifications. If the request is approved, the patient must wait a minimum of two weeks before becoming eligible to receive the lethal prescription.

Although the physician-assisted suicide law has seen limited use since its implementation, it has had an unexpected consequence. The debate over the law has forced medical professionals to reevaluate pain treatment in Oregon. Physicians are more willing to prescribe pain medications, and the number and quality of hospice care facilities has rapidly increased.
Read more: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/CliffsReviewTopic/Euthanasia-The-Right-to-Die.topicArticleId-26957,articleId-26941.html#ixzz0Xv6yS4Vt

Maybe the facilities don’t want to be the ones clearly responsible for signing off on someone’s death.

Lately, with all the debate the health care  overhaul has sparked some have to wonder do terminally ill people have the right to request their own death?

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26. November 2009 by student.

Okay, so I’m browsing CNN.com, like I usually do every evening, and I happen to see a story in Ted Talk Tuesday’s titled, Darwin and the case for ‘militant atheism’. Of course I’m thinking, here we go again another wave in the sea of debate regarding Evolution and Creation. I decided to take a look at it anyway, (while I’m at it let me tell you that I do not believe in Evolution), the story details an interview with the biologist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, who is an Atheist, has spent the last 30 plus years wrting a series of books supporting the claims Charles Darwin made in the “Orgin of Species”.

 Dawkins asserts in his book titled “The Selfish Gene, that “Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin.”"Dawkins argues that there is no doubt that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is true and, unlike some other scholars of the subject, says belief in evolution is not compatible with faith in religion. In fact, he argues, science and religion undermine each other.”

“I believe a true understanding of Darwinism is deeply corrosive to religious faith,” Dawkins says in his TED Talk.

“Evolution teaches that as species evolve they eventually reach ideal population levels. As species advance, superior species eliminate inferior species — “survival of the fittest.” Weak and inferior members of a species should be eliminated for the preservation of superior bloodlines and for the conservation of essential resources. “Nature” doesn’t desire “the mating of weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, might be ruined with one blow.” [1] “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.” [2] And as humans are merely a species of animal, we have no intrinsic value and are therefore by no means exempt from “the war of nature.” Thus, we have Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) asking the rhetorical question, “should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?”  http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/creation-vs-evolution.htm

So evolution is based on the premise of “Survival of the Fittest” no wonder Adolf Hitler used it to justify his actions against the Jews. It’s no secret that Darwin is views as a racist and held contempt for weaker, uncivilized people. Follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mxXICZ9mXo to watch a clip about this claim.

I’m no expert on the subject by any stretch of the imagination, but I just don’t understand why the theory of natural selection makes sense. Was the early form of existence on the earth so repulsive that organisms had to continually replecate themselves? And what would have happened had the ”Big Bang” gone wrong? What if the fundumental elements needed  to produce life after the big bang had been the slightest bit off, then would nothing have existed. Obviously not, but how can evolutionsits explain the fact that everything went just “perfect” during and after the ”Big Bang” was it pure luck or an Intelligent Design? Even if they tried to show using the Laws of Nature that everything was ripe for evolution, who developed these laws and how did they come to exist?

Both creationsists and evolutionists believe the earth started at some finite point, with Creationsists believeing with God and evolutionists believing there was some sort of  cataclysmic explosion. Either way you look at it the earth started from somewhere, it just didn’t exist.

Back to the CNN.com post, Dawkins asserts that aethists should defend themselves against religionat all costs. Now it seems to me that Aetheism is a religion in it’s own right. It is the choice or “belief” that you are going to refuse to beleive in God and choose to believe in secularism and science.

As far as I know evolution is tought in school, but I never saw creationism in one of my textbooks. Why can’t we look at both sides of the issue. Keep in mind that evolution is just a theory and has not been proven, so why are schools so hesitant to let children see both sides of the coin?

Well anyway, I’m going to wrap this up, there’s tons more I could write and various points of view to present, but in the end people have a choice to believe what they want.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

26. November 2009 by student.

What effect is too much video game exposure having on our children? In my opinion, a negative one. Too much video game exposure can lead to overweight children, increased youth violence, and decreased social skills.What happened to the days when you would see children playing together OUTSIDE instead of sitting in front of a T.V. or computer playing video games? Today children are more overweight than ever, and yes, some of this can be attributed to diet, but a large part has to do with their limited physical activity. It seems today that most kids don’t know what it means to have fun without some form of technology based entertainment. If there is no Wii or Playstation around they just don’t know what to do. When I was growing up you would create your own games or just play outside with friends. According to a study by the National Institute on Media and the Family, Children, ages 8 to 18, spend more time (44.5 hours per week) in front of computer, television, and game screens than any other activity in their lives except sleeping (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005). WOW! That’s astounding; no wonder they are so overweight! Replacing some of this time with more physical activities, like bike riding or gymnastics would be beneficial since obesity in children can lead to future health problems like high blood pressure and diabetes. Violence in video games can increase aggression. According to an article by the American Psychological Association titled, “VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES CAN INCREASE AGGRESSION”, the violence kids see in video games can be more harmful than what they see on T.V. because unlike television, video games are interactive and require the child to become the aggressor in order to win. You may think this isn’t true, but I know of teenage boys who have committed a crime based on what they saw in “Grand Theft Auto” simply because they wanted to “live out” the fantasy world they were engulfed in while playing video games. Now sure, I know that every teen that plays a video game is not going to commit a crime, but I caution against allowing youth too much exposure to violence in these games. For the record, I still don’t understand why we allow anyone, including adults, access to games that emulate crimes such as rape, murder, theft, etc. if it is illegal in this country. Either make these crimes legal or stop encouraging them through video games!  Some argue that games like “Grand Theft Auto” are for adults only, well in that case they need to carry an ‘AO’ rating and not ‘M’ which allows national retailers to carry the games. But of course this would reduce profitability and no one wants that, right? But I guess we do want teens going on killing sprees and blaming it on a video game (by the way, this happened in 2005 when Devin Moore killed two police officers and a dispatcher, then fled in a police vehicle). Alright, enough of that, on to my third (and final) point overplaying video games leads to decreased social skills for children.  Today many kids would rather sit in front of a game rather than spend time with family or friends, or attend to personal hygiene. Many kids identify more with the fantasy world of video games and turn there for acceptance. According to VideoGameAddiction.org, these games are designed to be addictive. Hooks are built into the games to keep people playing longer. Some kids even neglect school work or sleep in order to stay up and keep playing. To sum it all up, something needs to be done, and in my opinion it starts with the parent. Remove the consul from the child’s room, establish boundaries and parameters, let them know about the consequences of disobeying your rules, but DO SOMETHING!  

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