Death And Dignity

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Rhetorical Analysis Rough Draft Death and Dignity: A Case of Individualized Decision Making by Timothy Quill I believe that the main purpose of Quill’s essay is to point out his “belief that active, informed patient choice of treatment or non-treatment and of the patient’s right to die with dignity with much control and dignity as possible. Yet there was something about her giving up a.25 chance of a long-term survival in state in favor of almost certain death that disturbed me” (Quill 692). “Even though he believed in a patient’s choice of treatment, he was hoping that Diane would change her mind start chemotherapy” (692). Quill states “that as a former director of a hospice program, I know how to use pain medicine to keep patients comfortable and lessen suffering. I explained the philosophy of comfort, which I strongly believe in Quill (692). Quills main audience is to help doctors understand there are some cases that people have the right to die with dignity. He writes about a story about a woman named Diane, in which she was diagnosed with leukemia. Diane wanted to take her life when the time came and did not want to proceed with chemotherapy. She wanted to spend what ever time she had left with her family. This is a case that Quill took very personal because he wrote of Diane’s personal struggles in her life that she had overcome in the eight years that he had come to know her. When the time came, when Diane was no longer in control of her life she wanted to take her life in the least painful was as possible. Quill acknowledged and explored this wish but also thought that it was out of the realm of currently accepted medical practice and that it was more than he could offer or promise (692). The other reason that I thought Quills main audience were doctors is that he used medical term that were not clear as a general audience.

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