Life Issues Update

Lots and lots of things have happened in the bioethical world since I last wrote, judging from my foremost pusher of bioethics news, the excellent Wesley J. Smith. First of all, the UK Department of Public Prosecution has issued new guidelines on prosecuting assisted suicide, effectively decriminalizing cases which it is not deemed "in the public interest" to prosecute, viz.: where the victim has a "terminal" or "severe and incurable" or "severe degenerative" disease and expressed a desire to be killed. This is not humane. It is a blatant abandonment of the weakest and most vulnerable in society; the people who have the greatest need to hear confirmed, over and over again, that their life is valuable, that things would not be better if they were gone. And it does nothing to ensure that these vulnerable persons are not subjected to insiduous erosion of their will to live ("You know, darling, I really love you, but I can see you are suffering so much... You know, you don't have to do this. There is a way out... I can help you...")

And more from the UK: a severely disabled baby boy with congenital myasthenic syndrome has been taken off his ventilator and allowed to die, even though he was awake and cognitively well-functioning. To be sure, CMS is a terrible and irreversible condition - but there is no way around concluding that this child was killed.

Canada has set up a 6-member commission to investigate the issue of euthanasia. Shock and horror, the Chairman and at least 2 other members are ardent euthanasia proponents, one is a Dutch euthanasia researcher, and the last 2 seem not to have any special interest in the issue. Selection bias anyone?

The UK is on a roll these days: a man has died after he was apparently starved and dehydrated to death in a hospital. Sound horrifying? That is in fact now an accepted and common procedure in the UK these days, it turns out. Certain terminally ill people, instead of being actually cared for at a hospice, are subjected to a 'care pathway', entailing that not only all medical treatment (except painkillers) but also all food and fluids are withheld from them and they are sedated for the last part of the ordeal (which can take weeks). As far as I am concerned, this is simply cynically speeding up their death to save costs. But in this case, things went even more wrong: what was thought to be a relapse of a lung cancer turned out on autopsy to be a simple pneumonia. As if the procedure wasn't bad enough in itself. And it most likely is not the first such incident.

Former leader of the Human Genome Project Francis S. Collins, who has written a decent book on the relationship between science and religion and is a Christian (Epsicopalian, I think), has been appointed to head the NIH in the US. I was convinced by the sincerity of his religious beliefs in his book, but I thought he was wishy-washy on some issues. Indeed, he has stated that he supports therapeutic cloning, embryonic stem cell research and even eugenic abortion. Which begs the question, has the great scientist found a way to determine that embryos are not human or merely a way to determine the fastest way to gaining the top biomedical job in the US?

On a more positive note, assisted suicide bills have been defeated in South Australia (by the narrowest possible margin - one MP had a change of heart at the last minute, citing a troubled conscience) and New Hampshire. Also, a former Director of a Planned Parenthood facility resigned her post and began working for the pro-life cause after she viewed an ultrasound of an abortion (she also claimed that the facility were being told to aggressively push for more abortions rather than conducting prevention programmes since abortions generated more income). Finally, Switzerland may outlaw suicide tourism, even though assisted suicide will probably still be legal for Swiss citizens.

The war for the dignity of human life is raging on all fronts (also ones that are not covered here, of course, but since I am a medical person, these are my special concerns). Next summer, I will probably be joining the fray. I hope that I will be allowed to get on with my job and save some lives in my own country and abroad, but it is becoming increasingly probable that I will one day find myself being forced to act against my conscience for the sake of some phoney 'right' dreamed up by a biased committee. If it so happens that I am persecuted for this, I will gladly accept it to expose the illiberality of our supposedly tolerant society.

The BMJ Doesn't "Get" Disabled People

I have more than a little trouble with the Deputy Editor of one of the world's three most respected medical journals suddenly coming out to express an intense contempt of disabled persons.

Mr. Tony Delamothe of the British Medical Journal recently voiced his opinion in the journal's 'Observations' section that

"The debate on assisted dying has been hijacked by disabled people who want to live. It needs to be reclaimed for terminally ill people who want to die."

I can't begin to enumerate the things that are wrong with this statement. But it gets better. After referencing the view of Baroness Campbell, herself a severely disabled member of the House of Lords who needs a ventilator to be able to breathe, that

"sanctioning assisted suicide would make doctors and those who help disabled people think that death is what is wanted by disabled people, 'the very people who need every encouragement to live and not to succumb to society’s prevalent view that our situation is so tragic, so burdensome, so insufferable that surely we must want to die,'"

he says, "I don't get it."

However, it is not that he does not understand the argument, but it is certainly true that he doesn't "get" it:

"I understand that changing the law might mean that some people could feel under some obligation to bring about their premature end to avoid being a burden to others—and that severely disabled people might feel this more than most. But should such a risk override the freedom of competent terminally ill people to bring about their own end at a time of their choosing?"

So, in other words (though not really), guaranteeing the freedom of the 'competent' - i.e. the strong - to choose for themselves whether they want to live or die is more important than securing the rights of those who might feel tempted - or pressured - to get themselves killed due to weakness, pressure from unloving relatives, lack of encouragement from caregivers etc.? Never mind if a few weaklings get thrown overboard, we have to make way for the übermensch, eh?

Plus, it costs an awful lot of money to have them pesky disabled people hanging around.

Think that's an unfair assessment of Mr. Delamothe's point of view? Then tell me why, to back up his stance, he invokes the infamous Baroness Warnock, according to public opinion Britain's "leading moral philosopher," who has publicly stated that people who suffer from dementia are "wasting [their] families' lives and... wasting the resources of the NHS," and that it is perfectly understandable that they should feel a 'duty to die'.

I understand Mr. Delamothe's and Baroness Warnock's argument for euthanasia - but I don't "get" it. And as a future doctor who joined this profession to care for the weakest, I sure as hell don't want to.

British Medical Journal? More like Brutish Mengele Journal to me.

H/T Fr. Tim

More on the Eluana Case

From Zenit:

Cases Like Eluana's Can Have Happy Endings

Missionary Rejects Award in Protest of Italy's Euthanasia Ruling

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay, FEB. 16, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Father Aldo Trento has been caring for patients like Eluana Englaro for years, so when Italy refused to protect her life, he protested by returning one of Italy's highest honors. Since 1989 Father Trento has been one of the best-known missionaries of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo in Paraguay. He is 62 years old and is the head of a clinic for the terminally ill in Asunción. On June 2, the Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, conferred the title "Knight of the Order of the Star of Solidarity" on Father Trento.

Last Wednesday, the priest returned the honor to Napolitano in the wake of the latter's refusal to sign the special decree that would have saved the life of Eluana Englaro, who had been in a coma since 1992, and whose father had succeeded in a legal bid to have her feeding tube removed.

The priest asserted, "How can I, an Italian citizen, receive such an honor from you, who, with your action, permitted the death of Eluana in the name of the Italian Republic?" "I have more than one case like Eluana Englaro," Father Trento told the Italian newspaper Il Foglio. He continued: "I think of little Victor, a child in a coma, who clenches his fists. All we do is feed him through a tube. Faced with these situations, how can I react to the case of Eluana?"

"Yesterday they brought me a girl who was naked, a prostitute, in a coma, who had been dumped in front of a hospital. Her name is Patricia and she is 19. We washed her. Yesterday she started to move her eyes."

"Celeste is 11; she suffers from a very grave form of leukemia; she was never taken care of and they brought her to me just to bury. Today she is walking. And she laughs."

The missionary said: "I have taken more than 600 of these sick people to the cemetery. How can we accept something like what happened to Eluana?"

"Cristina is a little girl who was left in a garbage dump, she is blind, deaf, she trembles when I kiss her, she lives with a feeding tube like Eluana. She does not respond except for the trembling but little by little she will regain her faculties."

"I am the godfather for many of these sick people. I'm not bothered by their decaying bodies. If you could see with what humility my doctors care for them." Father Trento says that he feels "immense sorrow" for Englaro: "It is as if you were to say to me: 'We're going to take away your sick children now.'" For the missionary, "man cannot be reduced to chemicals." He added: "How can the president of the republic offer me a Star of Solidarity? I took it and returned it to the Italian embassy in Paraguay."

God bless this Priest and the wonderful work he is doing for those poor kids. How can the Italian government give him an award for this work and then in another case act as if it has no value whatsoever? I can imagine the grief he would feel if the Paraguayan government one day were to come to him and say that the parents of the handicapped children for whom he cares so deeply had decided that they were to be killed, and the government had decided to comply with their wishes.

Every. human. life. matters. If nothing else, a severely cerebrally handicapped person teaches the persons around him/her how to love and care. That's what we are so afraid of, yes, I feel it in my own life often enough. But it is a challenge which must be faced. To shy away from it is less than human, and with the aid of God's grace anything is possible, even that which seems superhuman.

Viva Berlusconi!

I never thought I would ever had written that header, but Berlusconi (whom I have well and truly loathed in the past for his populism and not-so-latent sexism) has really impressed me in the case of Eluana Englaro, the young Italian woman in a vegetative state for 17 years whose father recently got permission to disconnect her feeding tubes and starve her to death. The Vatican and the Italian Bishops have attempted to save her life for a long time, but recently Berlusconi entered the fray, stating that he would not have Eluana's death on his conscience. His government drafted a law to protect her but President Napolitano balked and she sadly passed away because of dehydration on Tuesday. More about the case here, with observations by prominent Italian neurologists who opposed the murder.

Berlusconi seems genuinely upset by the whole matter and offers this pithy analysis:

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi rejected the notion that Englaro had died of natural causes after she was deprived of food and water. "Eluana did not die a natural death," he said. "She was killed."

Amen. Access to food and water is not an "extraordinary treatment". It is an inalienable human right, also for persons with severe cerebral damage. I'm glad Berlusconi has seen this; maybe there is hope for Italy after all?