Don't treat the old and unhealthy

[Jennifer]

After spending quite a while thinking of ideas for my TOK presentation, I thought that I might be able to do it on the general argument that we shouldn't (or should - I'm not coming to a conclusion just yet!) treat the elderly, smokers, heavy drinkers etc. It was in a newspaper article recently and I found it pretty thought provoking. I wouldn't exactly come to a definite answer in my presentation. Instead I'm thinking of more exploring the implications of this issue - ie. where do we draw the line? Who counts as eligible for treatment? What would become of those people who we effectively let die or remain ill?

I was just wondering what people thought of this - I've been struggling to come up with something and this is the first thing I've thought of that sounds reasonably suitable for the presentation. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

[Charizard]

That sounds like an interesting topic. You could talk about ethics and the different ethics systems (for example, this would be unethical in terms of rights but it would be best in the 'greater good' sense that our limited resources should go to saving those that are likely to put them to use and reap the benefits for society). Another way it could be addressed: subsidies or free healthcare for those that are more likely to survive?

Of course, you should also talk about the implications and you could talk about knowledge issues like how we know whether or not the treatment will work on certain people.

[Sandwich]

This does sound like an excellent topic

How about switching it around and making the question "How do we know where to spend national health service money?". You can briefly outline the problem (that we have finite financial resources but closer to INfinite people needing to use it in some way or another) and then as part of that you can talk about people who've "brought ill health upon themselves" -- that would be your smokers and drinkers -- and then those for "whom life is not going to be extended by much" -- i.e. the seriously/terminally ill and the elderly. What about people in a persistent vegetative state? etc.

You do of course have to remember to keep getting back to ways of knowing (and areas of knowledge where appropriate) but that's an easy thing to do if you make your question into HOW do we know. I mean you can look at some of the present-day "how"s with organisations such as NICE (in the UK, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence) who're in charge of judging this sort of thing and the sorts of criteria they use such as Quality-Adjusted-Life-Years (i.e. how many more years somebody will have adjusted for the quality of life in those years).

There's tonnes to talk about and IMO this is really interesting. You just have to make sure you keep putting Ways of Knowing etc. in there to aim for top marks

[masochist]

You could try to connect it to the recent health care issues within the US? The health care bill passed was pretty lame and you could go into the reasons behind that and analyze both sides of the debate and how they relate to 'knowledge'. Its relevant to contemporary issues and there will be a lot of information that you could read through and synthesize.

[bLub]

Actually, I think that's a brilliant topic. Very interesting!

It sounds really rubbish, but I'm for that argument. I think the world is already overpopulated and when people are ill, they are "supposed" to die. That's natural regulation and natural selection. (I guess though, if someone of my family/friends got really ill, I'd want them to be treated... )

[Ruan Chun Xian]

You don't need to come up with a definite conclusion of what one should or shouldn't do. Instead, the idea is to look at the knowledge problems within the issue to argue a case for both sides. You can have your opinion, yes, and can state them in your presentation, but know that your opinion contains issues of bias too. You are certainly not preaching to say this is definitely what we should do, because...

[Jennifer]

Thanks for your input everyone. I had a discussion with my TOK teacher about this, and he was of the same opinion that it was an interesting topic, but told me that it was much too broad to cover in the space of one presentation. He said it'd be good if I could find a specific example and relate all the knowledge issues to this.. so, I did a bit of research and thought that the recent news about Claire Murray (a 25 year old Australian woman) who received a 250,000 government grant for a second liver transplant (as she was denied her 2nd transplant after her 1st failed due to drug use) was suitable.

I'm kind of confused about how exactly to structure my presentation though. I know the ideas that I want to explore, but it just seems like so much to put into a 20 minute presentation. What type of general structure would you recommend? The knowledge issues that I think I will predominantly address are:

How do we decide whether Claire was worthy of treatment?

How can we establish a set of criteria that would determine whether someone could be treated or not? (similarly, under what conditions is someone eligible for a grant?)

How do these criteria vary if considered from differing ethical/moral perspectives? How it would differ if it were approached with reason as opposed to emotion?

The more general knowledge issue would then be, what role should particular ways of knowing play in determining the value of something, including a human being's life? Can we simply judge lives as we judge objects?

I don't know though.. I still don't quite get the idea of a knowledge issue..