Prop

THW force feed anorexics

First Speaker
● Defining clinical anorexia: Diagnostic Criteria
○ Restriction of food intake leading to weight loss or a failure to gain
weight resulting in a "significantly low body weight" of what
would be expected for someone's age, sex, and height.
○ Fear of becoming fat or gaining weight.
○ Have a distorted view of themselves and of their condition
(Examples of this might include the person thinking that they are
overweight when they are actually underweight, or believing that
they will gain weight from eating one single meal. A person with
anorexia might also not believe there is a problem with being at a
low body weight; these thoughts are known to professionals as
"distortions.")
○ Imminent danger to their health and life due to their dangerously low weight
● Force feeding + therapy
○ Force feeding to keep them alive
○ Therapy can continue to keep trying to help them overcome the anorexia
themselves
● It’s better for their health (if they are severely anorexic and near death)
○ They need the food to stay alive, and they wouldn’t otherwise be as willing to eat
themselves → should force feed
● Anorexics do not have the mental capacity to consume anything
○ Patients with severe anorexia are assumed to lack capacity, on the grounds that
malnutrition impairs cognitive function, including the ability to make rational
decisions about treatment.
○ Impaired judgement, they cannot decide for themselves if they should be tube
fed (what their best interests are)
○ Lack capacity to save themselves
○ The law should generally not permit patients with anorexia nervosa to decline
nutrition and hydration, precisely because their autonomous ability to make such
decisions has been substantially circumscribed by this psychiatric condition
○ Often, girls and young women (the vast majority of sufferers) are not admitted to
care until they are gravely ill.
○ Eating disorders are difficult to treat because these patients tend to be resistant
to help. They suffer from body dysmorphia, convinced that they are fat and
ingesting too many calories, even as they waste away. Denial is a hallmark of the
illness.
○ They wouldn’t otherwise eat
○ Right to autonomy can be overridden when the patient’s decision-making is
affected, anorexia=distorted perception.
■ Patients have a right to refuse treatment but that is when they are
competent of making that decision rationally
 ■ Happens all the time in hospitals
■ Anorexia causes a body dysmorphia, these patients do not have the
conscious perception of themselves and their need for food
■ Not a valid argument for them because they are not making this decision
out of choice - anorexia is a mental condition too

Second speaker:

Too far gone to save, cannot be saved,
prolonging their suffering, is it worth it?
THEY'RE TOO SICK THEY SHOULD JUST
DIE LOL
This is the ethics part of your points so you
can like elaborate from that.
Everyone has a right to life, if they could be
saved, why not?
Anorexia is not a terminal illness that has no
solution. It is curable, even mentally. We
cannot just give up on patients because
they’re very sick

Anorexic patients, consent and stuff
Refusal of treatment should be √
More humane treatment
First speaker talked about right of bodily
autonomy already
More humane treatment, they won’t eat, how
would anything else be effective
Anorexia completely messes with perception
of self. How do you expect them to refuse
treatment when most can’t even acknowledge
they are sick

Trauma from forced treatment They are traumatizing themselves and

threatening their lives from this illness, we
don’t see any other way to apply effective
treatment. The trauma from forced treatment
is nothing compared to what they are doing to
themselves

● Ethics
○ When death is seen as a better alternative to eating, isn’t that just the illness
talking? People with ED often aren’t suicidal, just trying to reach their “ideal
weight,” an impossible goal that is a danger to themselves
○ Perhaps some patients are untreatable. But what if they die from missed
opportunities. If we fail to offer treatment while there is still hope for recovery are
we not ensuring that there will be more hopeless cases
● Force feeding can help anorexics psychologically
○ Starvation has been proven to cause anorexic patterns to perpetuate
○ Force-feeding needs to be a consequence of anorexia, leaving them to their own
diet is enabling them
○ Over-estimate the size of their face by 50%
● FUTURE Quality of life
○ Force feeding, they finally get nutrition, they feel better, yay
 ○ They can actually focus on recovering mentally while being treated physically

Prolonging the inevitable, torturing them by Contradiction

force feeding them

Last resort: too far gone, they will force feed
That is literally what this motion is about,
people who are too far gone, side opp has
conceded that there are situations where you
will absolutely need force feeding to help
them, which is what we have proposed
essentially??? Big lol

Just therapy them -- they’re too far gone?

Third speaker:

1. Short term drastic solution is important when talking about survival - who does this
motion talk about
2. Principle of autonomy in medical care
3. The price of invasive treatment

Feedback

prop opp

- 2nd half of first speech, important, - Not a clear alternative

sowing anorexia is mental condition - ?parallel: if you force a morbidly
can’t make autonomous medical obese person to do painful exercise
decision
- Good explanation but more
complex than that
- Where do these lines fall
- Parallel if someone is dying in
a car crash we save them
anyway even if they can’t
respond, they’re unconscious
- Anorexia, mind is impaired
- 1st prop, set off well, find where the
boundaries are for, why anorexia can
override bodily autonomy
- Good pairing of force feding with
 therapy
- Root physiological, treating them only
psychological is not good
- Desire vs second order desire
- I want a chocolate vs i wish i
didnt have such an addiction to
chocolate
- Starve vs not have anorexia
- Respect consent, but wishes
about their own desires that
also need to be respected
-

Odysseus siren’s call

Opp had case to win but didn’t hv details or attacks or parallels to why things work to overcome
proposition