Research Prospectus

I remember my freshmen year of high school reading a newspaper article about people in Britain needing surgery. They weren’t life-or-death situations, but the surgery would have provided the people more comfort. The article described the lines of people going outside, wrapped around the building, waiting to be seen by their doctor.  A person was interviewed saying they’d probably end up going to another country for their procedure so as not to have to wait over a ridiculous time period of six months otherwise. Even today that writing still resonates with me. I was disgusted at the healthcare the English had to live with; and this was how I became introduced to the system of universal healthcare. I aspire to be a doctor, and my definition of a doctor is of someone that helps people. How can a doctor expect to be as efficient as possible and provide each individual with the care and attention they deserve if they know there’s countless others they need to tend to before the day is through? In my opinion the demand universal healthcare ultimately places on physicians isn’t fair to either the patients or the doctors. A universal healthcare plan implemented into government must also affect the people living in that country. My working thesis is that Obama’s new healthcare plan, “Obama-care”, hurts more people such as the taxpayers and doctors, than helps the people who can’t afford private healthcare.

To support my thesis I would cover Obama’s plan thoroughly, clearly showing what he has suggested and compare it to aspects of our country’s present healthcare. A big portion of my paper would be dedicated to fully dissecting “Obama-care”; what it is, how it would differ, and what Obama’s administration claims the benefits of it would bring Americans. I would also look at articles and statistics showing our country and citizens’ current economic standings and look for a correlation between those and future predictions to see how or if it would drastically affect Americans and our everyday lives.

Counterarguments to my thesis will be that Obama’s new healthcare plan will bring the opportunity of medical attention to thousands of Americans who previously didn’t have it. Those against my position will use pathos to a great extent in their argument, countering, “Do you not care about the working poor who can’t otherwise afford healthcare?” However, this isn’t the main case. My belief is that this group of working poor won’t have access to satisfactory medical care anyway because of the physician’s less ample time to treat them given their more demanding patient list. If the government could provide more hours in a day this plan could then possibly work.

For research I intend to use scholarly articles I find regarding the subjects of the healthcare reform and how its changes will affect the United States.

I have already found three articles that will be useful in my argument against Obama’s healthcare reform. “The Case Against Obama Care” by Beier, Eric MD, MBA shows why it’s unneeded (http://www.medoptima.net/images/121809PERSPECTIVE.pdf), “Intensive Obama care” by Tanner, D. Michael explains the overall cost the new healthcare plan is going to cost American taxpayers (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10296), and “Faithful Patients: The Effect of Long-Term Physician-Patient Relationships on the Cost and Use of Healthcare by Older Americans” by Weiss, J. Linda PhD and Blustein, Jan MD, PhD (http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/86/12/1742) is a study showing that Americans with a close, long relationship with their doctor results in less expenses and less intensive medical care, supporting that this connectedness between patients and doctors would be lost with the switch to public healthcare.

I think I’ll find a lot of interesting facts regarding this topic and be able to a make well based argument on my own based on the data and information I find.  

"The Achievement of Desire"

"I intended to hurt my mother and father. I was still angry at them for having encouraged me toward classroom English. But gradually this anger was exhausted..." (pg 519)

It's ironic because Rodriguez does end up hurting his family, but for the opposite reasons. He begins to feel his heritage and and his family's background isn't good enough compared to the education he's receiving and the academic world he's enveloped within. It's surprising to know that he was ever against going to school and even learning English because he quickly became accustomed to it and preferred school and books to his family, becoming an outsider amongst the Rodriquez familia. I think he made a mistake in pushing his parents away through out his adolescence and young adulthood. Having a Mexican background set him apart from the "strangers" he'd always encounter in the library in Britain. Rodriquez, himself, even admitted although he was an accomplished reader, he failed to develop his own perspective. I think this is a metaphor regarding his life and ambition. He went very far with his education, fitting the mold of the "scholarship boy", but he failed to find self-purpose or self-identity partly because he alienated those who loved him. Overall Rodriquez made a choice to pursue his education over being more connected with his family, but my belief is that he easily could have had the best of both worlds.

The Pain Scale-According to Eula Bliss

7.
Also known as infinity.
On this portion of the scale I think it's interesting how Eula Bliss dissects the concept of pain and the scale people measure it on.
That scale is not accurate, just simply an approximation. Like the approximation of prime numbers and their square roots, 7 being a popular one located on the number line.
As Eula dissects "pain" itself, she comments that not only is there that physical unpleasantness we physically feel but also the knowledge of how long it'll last, or the mystery of how long it'll last. Because in the case of Eula Bliss, she doesn't know how long she'll have to live with her pain. She doesn't even know what's causing it. Can't that count as a pain all on its own? Earlier in the text Bliss refers to subdivisions of pain such as physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and financial. Which one would this aspect of pain fit into, or maybe it's a part of all of them?

Eula Bliss doesn't seem to be the overly religious, spiritual type yet she refers to Christianity quite often. Her analogy of 7 to the eternity of Hell in my opinion is deep, and it's obviously something she's thought about often. I see her point in it, however.

"Why Bother?"

In "Why Bother?"from the New York Times Magazine, author, Michael Pollan, immediately asks his readers this very question. He asks individuals to really ponder the effects of climate change, what we can actually "do" about it, and if it will even make any difference in the long run. Pollan admits this is a difficult question for many to answer including himself, but he begins to delve into the reasoning and structure behind his opinion and thought process of being economically and socially green and what it takes. Pollan argues that making small changes in your life isn't enough. Why? Because according to the author not everyone is doing it, such as Pollan's "evil twin, some carbon footprint doppelganger in Shanghai or Chongqing" (89), and even if these changes are put into effect (like eating locally and walking to work) they may have no effect whatsoever. Pollan believes that only through a combination of small changes in everyday living, laws established by politicians, and money doled out from anywhere available will an effect really resonate across the globe. He uses the strategy of logos to support his argument, such as a percentage graph of people by country that view global warming as a "very serious" problem and a statistic that states "consumer spending represents 70% of our economy" (90). Pollan writes that he thinks consumers feel helpless to do anything about our current "predicament" (90) because cheap energy has caused "industrial civilization" to become so "specialized" (91) with "divisions of labor being our connection to everyday actions" (91). Pollan's final word on the matter is that if one person decides to bother they can make a difference in their society and influence others to set off a "viral social change" (93). He suggests taking actions such as, abstaining from economic activity one day a week, planting a garden, or giving up imported meat.

Work Cited: Pollan, Michael. "Why Bother?" New York Times Magazine 20 Apr 2008: 19+. Rpt. in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing. John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 6th ed. New York: Pearson, 2012. 88-94. Print.

Research Topic- The Evolution of Medicine

When I was told I had to pick a research topic I kind of panicked. I've written research papers before, but I think one of the hardest parts is choosing a topic to write about that's easy to find information on and write passionately about. I knew I wanted it to be about medicine because that's what my interest is in, being a pre-med/pre physical therapy major, however there's so many different directions I could go in with that. The possibilities were endless....so I decided to just start typing random aspects of medicine into the Google search bar and see what the Wide Web came up with.

A certain article really caught me eye. The title was "Modern Medicine?". In it the author, David A. Wise, explains that signs of modern medicine and hygiene were evident in the Bible and the books of Genesis. He gives examples such as Israelites being instructed to isolate the sick, burn used dressings, and even certain practices used on women after child-birth. All in all, health and sanitary procedures instilled at the mark of the beginning of modern medicine are very comparable to those of in the Pentateuch 4,000 years ago.

So my research question is this- Has the basis of medicine really evolved, or has it just been built upon over the past hundreds of years?
In my paper I will go into depth about the history of medicine and medical practices and compare it to  those of today.

Here's the link to the article I read and was referring to:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v17/n1/modern-medicine