Sarah's policy paper

In today’s society, nearly twenty five percent of all elderly people have a mental illness that goes untreated. Anti-psychotic sales are increasingly on the rise while criminal disobedience and mischief is becoming more prevalent. As stress and expectations soar in the current American society, so do the mental disorders that tend to accompany.
Children are more commonly diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder than any other childhood malady. Ritalin and the generic co-brands are the highest out the door drug for adolescents and children. Antipsychotic sales for children in New Jersey alone went up twenty-five million in the last ten years. Not alone in the ailment department are children, however, adults are diagnosed most highly with depression and anxiety problems. This should be expected in the fast paced life-style that most people live in.
The drugs that people choke down on a daily basis have extremely harmful, possible side effects. Yet, no one worries about possible fatal heart attacks, blindness, and hundreds of other combinations of terrible things that often seem to be worse than the original ailment. American’s depend too highly on drugs to cure everything, go in for an earache, leave with pills that can cause infertility, and anti psychotics are no different. The side effects are dangerous and often go unheeded by the public until the FDA realizes how dangerous it is and pulls it from the shelves, not always in time, however. Millions of dollars are lost in lawsuits with pharmaceuticals and against drug companies; those dollars are being shelled out to people who blindly take a drug without questioning the effects and are seen as the victims.
Criminal mischief starts young as well, and oddly with females. The percentages of female criminal activity are far higher than male through age 15, after that are more male dominated criminality fields. Children are growing up faster; people have been saying it for years. So many years that it is beginning to sound plausible. At 12-13 years old, 17.5% of children that age are into criminal mischief of some sort. The cause being inconclusive as to whether it is caused by upbringing and the environment or truly engrained into the child’s mind, either way, the behavior is coming from the frontal lobe region of the brain where emotions are created.
António Egas Moniz was a Nobel Prize winner; he did amazing things in the medical field, including the starts of the radiology field. He is also famous for his experiments with ablation procedures, such as limbic leucotomies. Limbic leucotomies are similar to sub caudate tractotomies, however, rather than dealing with the medulla, leucotomies only involve ablation of the white matter in the prefrontal cortex. While leucotomies are rarely done, their benefits far outweigh their possible risks. A simple leucotomy procedure has been shown to cure severe mental illnesses and prevent criminal deviance. Severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorder and even things like moodiness and youthful disobedience have been shown to be greatly lessened or all around cured by the leucotomy procedure. Like any antipsychotic or other pharmaceutical chemically based drug, leucotomies have risks. These risks include things such as increased apathy and shortened attention span. However, when antidepressants are made to treat depression and a side effect is worsened depression, the idea of a leucotomy procedure sounds all the better.
All the problems with society start with the children, children, after all, are the future. Therefore, Americans should do everything possible to make sure the children are healthy and the future is bright. Limbic Leucotomies should be deemed mandatory for all children before reaching adolescence.
Complaints about money are foolish, because there is no argument. Twenty-five million dollars alone went to one woman for a mess up on her drugs at Walgreens. That was just to one person in 2008; Miss Mary is going to be eating well tonight and every night from then on! Money saved from lawsuits raised by pharmaceutical mess-ups will be in the hundreds of billions each year. Not only are there immense amounts of money to be saved there, but also insurance will cover much of it if not all. The current health care plan presented by Obama and Biden includes a portion that is going to require prevention services. These prevention services are meant to include things like cancer screenings; however, a preventative psychosurgery will do more to save money and lives than a preventative cancer screening ever could.
The frivolity of the arguments is easily countered by the logic behind such an incredible procedure. This procedure has been done since the 1930’s successfully, and with the skills of today’s surgeons and the tools, technology, and resources now in the procession of even the most imbecilic doctors, the capable doctors would have no problem being able to successfully perform leucotomies.
America has the resources the ability and the financial support to be able to prevent crime and stop dangerous drug addictions and usage. It would be difficult to believe that a person would want the children of the future to be miserable, in pain or in jail, living lives far inferior to the ones in which this simple procedure could promise them.

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