Allowing to Die Euthenasia?

[Madaglan]

I know the Catholic Church is against euthenasia, and for good reason. In the wrong hands especially, it can have horrendous consequences in society, with certain people deciding which persons are fit to continue living, and which persons are not.

With this in mind, is there ever a time when allowing someone to die is morally acceptable? By way of example, a family member recently passed away. She was in the hospital for several weeks. The last several days, she clearly was going to die, but doctors kept on jabbing her with needles and using extreme measures just to keep her alive. She was in extreme pain, but the doctors kept her alive for a few more days. In such a case, where doctors have nothing to offer to rescue a patient from death, is it morally right to accept this fact, and stop invasive treatments that only prolongue life a few miserable days?

 

[Galnextdoor]

It depends on what you mean by extreme measures. You do not have to use extraordinary measures to keep a person alive. Extraordinary measures would be machines that breathe for the patient, machines that make the heart continue to beat, and dialysis. A person can write a living will that makes clear that if they should end up brain dead or being kept alive by machines to pull the plug on the machines. That is not euthanasia. Euthanasia is when a person is alive, has brain waves, but you kill that person. You starve the person to death by not feeding them or you cause the person to die by not giving them fluids or liquids.
If a person has cancer and refuses treatment, that is not euthanasia. If a person is in pain and dying, she can refuse further treatment. That is not euthanasia.

 

[stevekehl]

Euthanasia and witholding medical treatment are different things. If a cancer patient refuses treatment that is allowing nature to take its course. Euthanasia is where someone is killed prematurely because death is inevitable any way so why suffer. Someone with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) decides they are going to die so they ask their doctor for a lethal dose of potassium, or to put him to sleep and then inject poison. It also applies to killing people who are “better off dead.” The Nazis did this in Germany, killing mentally ill, crippled, and mentally retarded people by driving them around in vans with the tailpipe connected the back. Having a living will that specifies when treatment should be witheld is not a sin.

 

[Madaglan]

Thanks for your responses.

 

[Joseph_L_Varga]

A recent American case is what happened in Memorial Hospital, New Orleans, some 5 days after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. A doctor named Anna Pou and two nurses injected 9 patients in the hospital with a lethal dose of a mixture of morphine and midazolam. This mixture, and the doses, were specifically intended to suppress the respiratory center and thus cause respiratory arrest and kill the patients. The patients were never informed, never asked whether they wanted to die - the doctor and the two nurses “played God” and decided to actively kill the patients with this mixture of drugs - this is “active euthanasia”. This used to be called simply “murder” and I still prefer to call it “murder”.

What happened to Terry Schiavo in 2005, who was intentionally starved and dehydrated to death, might be called “passive euthanasia” (murder by withholding life-sustaining food and water). This is another form of murder, through starvation and deprivation of water.

The Catholic Church says the patient must be fed, hydrated, and made comfortable - you cannot withhold food and water/intravenous hydration. The patient should also receive ordinary medication appropriate to his/her condition. This can include things like antibiotics in case of infection, morphine/anaesthetics in case of pain. It is not a sin to give anaesthetics (morphine) to suppress the pain, even if those anaesthetics are expected to shorten the life of the patient. However, this is not the same as deliberately injecting the patient with a lethal dose of the painkiller. For cancer patients, “ordinary medication” might include anti-cancer drugs, but there’s no moral obligation to pull all the stops and give all the expensive drugs that might or might not help. For example, some of these dugs cost as much as $ 1.2 M per year, and might only postpone death by a few weeks or a few months.

 

[Madaglan]

A recent American case is what happened in Memorial Hospital, New Orleans, some 5 days after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. A doctor named Anna Pou and two nurses injected 9 patients in the hospital with a lethal dose of a mixture of morphine and midazolam. This mixture, and the doses, were specifically intended to suppress the respiratory center and thus cause respiratory arrest and kill the patients. The patients were never informed, never asked whether they wanted to die - the doctor and the two nurses “played God” and decided to actively kill the patients with this mixture of drugs - this is “active euthanasia”. This used to be called simply “murder” and I still prefer to call it “murder”.

What happened to Terry Schiavo in 2005, who was intentionally starved and dehydrated to death, might be called “passive euthanasia” (murder by withholding life-sustaining food and water). This is another form of murder, through starvation and deprivation of water.

The Catholic Church says the patient must be fed, hydrated, and made comfortable - you cannot withhold food and water/intravenous hydration. The patient should also receive ordinary medication appropriate to his/her condition. This can include things like antibiotics in case of infection, morphine/anaesthetics in case of pain. It is not a sin to give anaesthetics (morphine) to suppress the pain, even if those anaesthetics are expected to shorten the life of the patient. However, this is not the same as deliberately injecting the patient with a lethal dose of the painkiller. For cancer patients, “ordinary medication” might include anti-cancer drugs, but there’s no moral obligation to pull all the stops and give all the expensive drugs that might or might not help. For example, some of these dugs cost as much as $ 1.2 M per year, and might only postpone death by a few weeks or a few months.

I distinctly remember the Terri Schiavo case. Question: you mention the expensive drugs that can cost 1.2 M per year to postpone death a short period of time. What about the cases (and I’m sure they exist) where a person who is a vegetable can accumulate 1 M per year or more in medical costs, care which does not cure but only keeps alive? Certainly no one can put a price tag on a person, but what does one say about this situation, where the family very well can enter bankruptcy and have their own set of health problems consequent to the stress?

I have a good Catholic friend whose father suffered from terminal dementia. At the end, he started using a feeding tube but then either resisted or indicated through bodily motion that he did not want any more food. My friend and her mother elected to not continue with the feeding tube, and shortly thereafter he passed away. (this is how I remember the account related to me; I apologize if it is not exactly correct in minor details). Anyhow, her father reached the point where his mind and body were dying and no longer desired sustenance. I, incidentally, saw the same with my cat a few months ago. He had stomach cancer. We drained his stomach and gave him appetite stimulants, but he always resisted and spit the pills out. He always was a hungry cat, but when deathly sick, he no longer ate and his body just started shutting down. After he screamed all night, we had to put him to sleep. So, the point of this: can a further distinction be made between “passive euthenasia” where the sick person still shows signs of appetite and digestion; and stop giving food to a person because to give food to a person who has no appetite or a declining digestive system would be force-feeding against the sick person’s appetite and/or ability to digest?

 

[stevekehl]

A person choosing to stop eating is different from someone else deciding to withold food and water. People often stop eating at the end of a long illness, few will give up water. Illness, organs failing, inability to digest can lead to loss of appetite, unless unconscious, the body never loses the thirst reflex.

 

[Madaglan]

A person choosing to stop eating is different from someone else deciding to withold food and water. People often stop eating at the end of a long illness, few will give up water. Illness, organs failing, inability to digest can lead to loss of appetite, unless unconscious, the body never loses the thirst reflex.

Thanks for this info!