Essay Instructions: Critical Essays
Instructions: Write one essay (of approximately 500-1000 words each) for each of the following passages, summarizing and evaluating each passage. Be sure to use the appropriate criteria in your evaluation, depending on what kinds of argument or theory is being presented. NOTE: Both passages from J. Cederblom and D. W. Paulsen, Critical Reasoning, 5th edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsroth, 2001
Truth about ?assistance?
There are many good reasons respected groups oppose suicide. Here are some of them.
By Wesley J. Smith
To paraphrase the old musical classic, assisted-suicide advocates are great pretenders. They promise that it will be restricted ?as a last resort? to mentally competent, terminally ill people. They argue that the killing will be facilitated only by super careful Marcus Welby clones They promise that the entire practice will be strictly controlled and, above all, compassionate. Balderdash. Let?s open our eyes to the truth.
Assisted suicide is not about terminal illness.
Jack Kevorkian epitomizes what actual assisted-suicide practice would look like. Approximately 20% of his subjects (his term) have been terminally ill. The largest category of people he has helped to die were disabled. Three had no physical illness on autopsy. That?s not all. The 9th Circuit Count of Appeals decision, now before the Supreme Court, specifically held that the disabled ?will, along with non-impaired individuals, be beneficiaries? of legalized assisted suicide.
Moreover, the court ruled that ?a decision by a duly appointed surrogate decision maker is, for all legal purposes, the decision of the patient himself.? This means that if upheld, it would allow the permissible, nonvoluntary killing of those who are legally incompetent, which could include Alzheimer?s patients, mentally retarded people and, perhaps, children.
It is not about compassion.
Studies show that suicidal people who are dying or disabled are no different from those who want to die because of, say, a lost business or divorce. Almost all are clinically depressed.
We will interfere with the jilted lover?s ?right to die,? by force if necessary. Yet we are supposed to allow doctors to assist the suicides of persons with multiple sclerosis or cancer when next week or next month they might regain the desire to live.
That isn?t compassion; it is the ultimate abandonment.
Follow the money:
Headlines announce almost daily the pressure that for-profit HMOs place on doctors to reduce the cost of health care.
Plug legalized assisted suicide, which is far cheaper than long-term care, into the HMO equation.
Imagine ?choosing? assisted suicide because your HMO denied you adequate access to specialists in pain control or appropriate treatment for depression. It could happen.
Or think how you would feel if an HMO doctor recommended suicide as the best ?treatment? for your spouse, and you knew that the doctor could be fired or lose bonus income for providing your beloved with too much care but would be financially untouched for assisting in his or her suicide.
These are just a few of the many reasons the American Medical Association, the Hospice Nurses Association and the Clinton administration, among many diverse others, have filed briefs in the Supreme Court against legalizing assisted suicide.
It?s time to stop pretending, open our eyes, and see assisted suicide for what it really would be: a moral and ethical catastrophe.
The Secret to a Happy Marriage? Men Giving In
The Los Angeles Times
Husbands, forget all that psychobabble about active listening and validation.
If you want your marriage to last for a long time, the newest advice from psychologists is quite simple: Just do what your wife says. Go ahead, give in to her.
Active listening, in which one partner paraphrases the other partner?s concerns??So what I hear you say is?? ?is unnatural and requires too much of people in the midst of emotional conflict, says psychologist John Gottman of the University of Washington. ?Asking that of couples is like requiring emotional gymnastics,? he said.
Gottman and his colleagues studied 130 newlywed couples for six years in an effort to find ways to predict both marital success and failure.
Couples who used such techniques were no more likely to stay together than couples who did not, they report in the Journal of Marriage and Family, which is published by the National Council on Family Relations.
?We need to convey how shocked and surprised we were by these results for the active listening model,? the team said in the article. In fact, Gottman and his colleagues have long recommended active listening to couples seeking counseling and had expected that its use would be a predictor of success in marriages.
That it was not a predictor, he said, suggests that its widespread use in marital counseling should be abandoned.
The marriages that did work well all had one thing in common?the husband was willing to give in to the wife.
?We found that only those newlywed men who are accepting of influence from their wives are ending up in happy, stable marriages,? Gottman said. The autocrats who failed to listen to their wives? complaints, greeting them with stonewalling, contempt and belligerence were doomed from the beginning, they found.
But the study did not let wives completely off the hook. Women who couched their complaints in a gentle, soothing perhaps even humorous approach to the husband were more likely to have happy marriages than those who were more belligerent. ?That type of (belligerent) response is even more exaggerated in violent marriages,? he said.
The fact that happily married couples do not normally use active listening is not a surprise, according to psychologist Howard Markman of the University of Denver, author of the 1994 book Fighting for your Marriage. ?We?ve found that in our own studies,? he said.
In fact, he says that Gottman is setting up a ?straw man? in the study of active listening and validation, which is another form of recognizing the legitimacy of a spouse?s opinions. ?When active listening is taught, it is not because happy couples use it,? Markman said. ?We use it to help couples disrupt the negative patterns that predict divorce.?
Gottman said he is ?very sympathetic? to that idea. ?If you can genuinely listen and be empathetic when you are the target of the complaint, that can be very powerful,? he said. But for the average person, he said, ?it is just too hard. The average person meets anger with anger.?
The differences between Gottman and Markman are typical of the turmoil in the filed of marital counseling. A 1993 report said that marital therapy has a relapse rate so high ?that the entire enterprise may be in a state of crisis.? A recent Consumer Reports study indicated that people who underwent such therapy were the least satisfied among people who have undergone any form of psychotherapy.
Gottman?s study was designed to identify the factors that naturally contribute to a successful marriage, so those might be brought into play in therapy, thereby making it more successful.
?If you want to change marriages,? he said, ?you have to talk about the ?emotionally intelligent? husband. Some men are really good at accepting a wife?s influence, at finding something reasonable in a partner?s complaint to agree with.? That group represents perhaps a third of all men, he said.