Why euthanasia will someday be legal
News today that should scare the hell out of anyone who wants to die in peace: British scientists have discovered "cognition" in a vegetative patient. Actually, they have found a single person out of 54 patients who seemed to be able to respond to a yes or no question as measured by an MRI, according to Popular Science.
I realize this may encourage some at the "natural death" end of the prolife spectrum, but I find it more to be a sign of our denial of death. The news here is that most of the patients indeed show no brain activity. One, through the use of incredibly sophisticated technology, seems to be answering yes or no questions. But is this a human life? Not by any measure I am aware of.
Hence the title of this blog: This kind of thing is terrifying to most people. To be paralyzed, minimally conscious, and experimented upon, chained by feeding tubes and machines to a broken body. This is why some people campaign for the right to end their own lives and to seek a physician's assistance in doing so. I think that's a bad idea for all kinds of reasons--people will stop trusting their doctors, some may be encouraged or feel compelled to end their lives because they feel like a burden--but the fast pace and lack of ethical reflection on the part of medical science is going to get us there faster than we think.
Our church doesn't need to be encouraging this sort of thing. We should be helping one another accept death--our own and of those we love--rather than promoting some medical-technological limbo as "prolife." It is the opposite.
Comments (7)
Euthanasia
By Jim Lein on Tuesday, February 9, 2010What about older people who don't want to be kept alive beyond when they become very sick and debilitated? Demographic data tells us that expenditures on persons in their last 2 years of life account for 40 percent of all Medicare expenditures. Some, or many, older people must be thinking about how their disproportionately high medical costs may well leave no Medicare for their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren.
I raise this question at age 69, after a minor heart procedure, thinking of a very good, moral, caring, religious man who after many years on kidney dialysis, stopped it and died in a week, at age 85. He'd lived longer than several relatives who died much younger with the same inherited disease. I don't know his reasoning, but he was intrigued when, three years earlier, James Michener went off dialysis and died. This seems a moral question for us all -- particularly for those of Medicare age. There must be many people like this man and like James Michener -- thinking of others, leaving something for others, leaving the world a better place than they found it. I'm thinking about it. I'm leaning in their direction. How I will think and feel later, I can't say. But it is something to consider, discuss and pray about.
Wow, what a great conversation starter
By Bryan Cones on Thursday, February 11, 2010Interesting. Depending on his reasons, the man who went off dialysis could been making a perfectly moral decision, though I'm sure some would accuse him of suicide. I do wonder if all the energy and money we put into preserving life at its very end is a sign that during life, we're not preparing ourselves tor "greeting" it.
Of course, since I'm not an older adult myself at 36, I feel funny talking about it, probably both because I want to affirm older adults and acknowledge how much they've guided me, and because I'm not ready to think about my own death.
But I wonder what a group of adult Catholics of various ages would say if they gathered to discuss both the moral and spiritual dimensions you raise.
Bryan Cones
On a lighter note Bryan...
By Eminem Relapse ... on Thursday, February 11, 2010I'm also in your age bracket....
Actually, in the eyes of many, we are not only "older adults", we are ancient....lol
An 18 year old I work with was just telling me yesterday about how she felt "like she was 40" and therefore that "her life was over"
Will Euthanasia Someday Be Legal?
By Helen Welter (not verified) on Tuesday, February 9, 2010People who are in a vegatative state are being kept alive "unnaturally". What is "natlural" about feeding tubes, IV's and respirators? 50 years ago when these technalogical advances were not known, people in vegatative states died "naturally".
I have been a hospice nurse for 25 years so I know something about death and dying. Dying naturally without feeding tubes, etc... is a much more dignified death than when people are kept alive by artifical means. The philosophy of hospice is that it doess nothing to hasten death nor to prolong life. When there is no hope of recovery or quality of life,it seems to me that artificial feeding and such prolongs death, not life.
Why are we, who say we believe in life after death and that we are born to die so that we can live eternally, so afraid of dying when our bodies can no longer sustain life without artifical means?
Thank you for pointing out that keeping bodies going with artificial means is the opposite of "pro life" and is more about being "against natural death"
Human Life?
By GNW_Paul (not verified) on Sunday, February 7, 2010I think you are confusing some philosophical definition of "person" with human life.
Vegetative or not, we are talking about humans who are alive - thus human life.
Certain philosophers debate about what rights should be granted in the case of brain damage and argue that brain function and cognitive abilities are proportional to the concept of "person" or "personhood." Some will advocate that certain animals are more "persons" that some people!
The Catholic Church proclaims the inherent dignity of all human beings. Period. From conception until natural death.
The Catholic Church also teaches that basic human rights, such as the right to live, are part of natural law and not something that can be granted or revoked by the State or by Philosophers.
You said it "natural death"
By Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, February 9, 2010You said it "natural death" but what is natural about being kept alive by machines even if it is a surgically implanted feeding tube? It isn't natural. And that's why it scares so many. On the other hand there are many who are sure the government wants to get to the point people will accept euthanasia for the old and sick or mentally challenged. Fear, fear, fear. Where is the hope in all these people who believe in a good God? I side with natural figuring that best fits with the idea of the "will" of God.
Vegetative State
By John Chuchman (not verified) on Thursday, February 4, 2010Don't let the Bishops see this; they'll try to force us to keep loved ones alive forever.
