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Issue
Date: March 26, 2004
 Debate
over clinical reality, human dignity
Editor’s
note: NCR Rome
correspondent John L. Allen Jr. attended the congress of the
World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations in Rome and
reports the following discussion. Other coverage of the event
can be found in his Word From Rome column on the NCR Web
site.
Fr. Norman Ford from
the Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics in Melbourne,
Australia, sparked debate by arguing in favor of withdrawal of
care under some circumstances.
“Failure to give due
regard to the clinical reality of permanently unconscious
patients shows a lack of respect for them,” Ford said. “The
patient should not be subjected to the ontological indignity of
being sustained by medically assisted nutrition and hydration
for years of unconscious life.”
Fr. Gerald Gleeson of
the Catholic Institute of Sydney, Australia, agreed that food
and water can be removed if it becomes “futile, burdensome,
not beneficial to patient, and is prolonging death.”
These arguments were
challenged by other participants.
A French physician who
works with persistently unresponsive patients challenged Ford,
asking how he knows that these patients don’t feel pain. In
any event, she asked, why starve people to death over two weeks?
If the aim is to end their life, why not be honest and simply
put them to death by lethal injection? In other words, why not
admit that what you’re really talking about is euthanasia?
Auxiliary Bishop
Anthony Fisher, a well-known Australian ethicist, issued a
similar challenge to Ford: If continuing to live is unworthy of
human dignity with patients incapable of recovery, he asked, why
spoon-feed an incapacitated person? Why bother covering them up
to avoid colds?
A panel of Australian
ethicists argued that the debate is between two notions of human
dignity, one existential, focusing on a person’s capacities
and “quality of life,” another connatural, focusing on the
inherent dignity of all human life. The panel also contended the
term “vegetative” is unworthy of human dignity, arguing that
it should be replaced with “persistently unresponsive.”
Ironically, the conference Web site is
www.vegetativestate.org.
-- John L. Allen Jr.
National
Catholic Reporter, March 26, 2004
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