Jeff Conaway and life support

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Maxirad said:
Can somebody in this forum please explain when it is morally just to take someone off of life support?.
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The Vatican advocates the Right to Life in most circumstances (not taking into account the defiant USCCB that’s been funneling collection money to organizations advocating and financing abortion – YouTube links below), aside from preserving life where God is clearly calling a person from this world to the next. The Church does not place obligations on us to interfere in the dying process. The ultimate meaning of a person’s life is not found in this world but rather in the next to come, and the Church does not place obstacles on a soul’s entry into the fullness of Life.

Considering the Terri Schiavo tragedy, we are obliged to provide a dying person with food and water as an ordinary means of sustaining life. This is not an extraordinary means of life-support, and are therefore not optional. Anyone who would remove the basic intravenous feeding (or a stomach feeding tube) is not allowing the natural death process to take place but hastening the death of another, and this is considered a sin by the RCC (maybe not the USCCB).

In view of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, there is a significant difference between turning off a machine that is keeping a dying person alive, letting a person die a natural death, and physician assisted suicide (where when a doctor prescribes a lethal amount of medication with the intent of helping a person commit suicide). The patient then takes the dose himself or herself. The Vatican does not approve of euthanasia or assisted suicide.

youtube.com/watch?v=ymwguwy5BCw&feature=player_embedded

youtube.com/watch?v=EbK8viMApTc&feature=player_embedded
God Bless
 
Insight said:
Considering the Terri Schiavo tragedy, we are obliged to provide a dying person with food and water as an ordinary means of sustaining life. This is not an extraordinary means of life-support, and are therefore not optional.
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What about a ventilator? Is that optional? Air is also an ordinary requirement of life, and depriving someone of air would kill them. But if someone is unable to move his chest up and down, then he cannot take in this air without mechanical help. At what point does the delivery system become extraordinary, even if the thing that is being delivered is ordinary?

I ask this because it seems that while food and water are ordinary means of sustaining life, that does not mean every possible delivery system for those necessities is also ordinary. What if a person has a digestive deficiency that is unable to process regular food, and only can take some exotic lab-synthesized product? Are we required to provide it? Would have early Church fathers have recognized mechanical feeding tube machines as ordinary means of sustaining life?
 
LeafByNiggle said:
What about a ventilator? Is that optional?
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Yes.
LeafByNiggle said:
Air is also an ordinary requirement of life, and depriving someone of air would kill them. But if someone is unable to move his chest up and down, then he cannot take in this air without mechanical help. At what point does the delivery system become extraordinary, even if the thing that is being delivered is ordinary?
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Making the lungs pump mechanically is extraordinary, and not required.
LeafByNiggle said:
I ask this because it seems that while food and water are ordinary means of sustaining life, that does not mean every possible delivery system for those necessities is also ordinary.
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No.

You are confusing the *delivery *of food and water-- which the body assimilates and *processes *on its own-- and mechanically making the heart pump and the lungs inflate.

If the body could not process the food and water at all, we would no longer be required to deliver it. The dying process has begun at that point.
LeafByNiggle said:
What if a person has a digestive deficiency that is unable to process regular food, and only can take some exotic lab-synthesized product? Are we required to provide it? Would have early Church fathers have recognized mechanical feeding tube machines as ordinary means of sustaining life?
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This is a question for bioethics but I believe the answer is yes. Similar to a gluten intolerant person being accomodated with something they are not allergic to. We do not require them to eat bread and have their body reject it. We provide an alternative.

If the body rejects all sustinence, then the dying process has begun.
 
1ke said:
You are confusing the *delivery *of food and water-- which the body assimilates and *processes *on its own-- and mechanically making the heart pump and the lungs inflate.
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Why should delivery be such an important deciding factor? Most people sustain themselves by putting food in their mouths, chewing then swallowing. Seems to me that putting a tube down someone’s throat and force feeding them is a bit outside of the ordinary.
 
1ke said:
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You are confusing the *delivery *of food and water-- which the body assimilates and *processes *on its own-- and mechanically making the heart pump and the lungs inflate.

If the body could not process the food and water at all, we would no longer be required to deliver it. The dying process has begun at that point…
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The “processing” of food begins in the mouth. The food is chopped up by the teeth. Enzymes in the saliva begin the digestion process. Then the food is swallowed. Then the stomach adds acids and churns the food some more and passes it on to the small intestines where nutrients are extracted. It seems to me that providing a mechanical replacement for the chewing, adding of enzymes, and swallowing is very similar to the use of a ventilator. In both cases the body is unable to bring in something it needs (air or food). And in both cases the mechanical replacement serves that function. What makes a ventilator fundamentally different from a feeding tube machine? Remember, it is not just a tube. It is a whole system whose complexity is comparable to that of a ventilator. (And I am talking only about a ventilator, not a heart lung machine.)
 
Thanks 1ke, I couldn’t have said it better. Sometimes it seems like trying to split atoms with a razor blade.

God Bless
 
Too bad for him and his family.

In Taxi, he was supposed to be one of the lead actors in the comedy ensemble, but it didn’t work out; characters like Christopher Lloyd’s “Reverend Jim”, Andy Kaufman’s “Latka Gravas” and Carol Kane’s “Simks Gravas” were more successful and ate into his face time. He apparently had trouble dealing with that.

In any case, bioethic cases can be very difficult and everyone is different. Precisely what we consider “extrodinary” in any one case can be a very difficult thing to determine for the parties involved, and in many cases are morally arrived at after reflection and prayer.

There are principles, and these are crucial, but they are a formulary by which we can just look up an answer.
 
Newbie2 said:
Too bad for him and his family.

In Taxi, he was supposed to be one of the lead actors in the comedy ensemble, but it didn’t work out; characters like Christopher Lloyd’s “Reverend Jim”, Andy Kaufman’s “Latka Gravas” and Carol Kane’s “Simks Gravas” were more successful and ate into his face time. He apparently had trouble dealing with that.

In any case, bioethic cases can be very difficult and everyone is different. Precisely what we consider “extrodinary” in any one case can be a very difficult thing to determine for the parties involved, and in many cases are morally arrived at after reflection and prayer.

There are principles, and these are crucial, but they are a formulary by which we can just look up an answer.
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Just heard the news, He was taken off life support and passed on peacefully. May God have mercy on his soul.

God Bless
 
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