End of Life 2

The Pope has recently said (or so I am told by several sources) that withholding of nutrition and hydration from those in a persistent vegetative state is close to if not the same thing as euthanasia by omission. I also understand from an NPR story this morning (is this a good source?) that the practice in many Catholic hospitals has been to treat the withholding of nutrition and hydration as equivalent to the withholding of life support systems and that this latest development will cause major ripples (is this an understatement?) in Catholic health care in the United States.

I am not a medical ethicist, and I have not spent a great deal of time studying or thinking about this issue. But, when I first heard, several years ago, that the developing Catholic position was to treat the withholding of nutrition and hydration as equivalent to the withholding of life support systems, I was troubled by that conclusion. I intuitively rejected or was repulsed by the thought of purposely allowing a person to starve to death when the body (except for the ability to consciously take in food and water) continued to function on its own.

Bishop Sgreccia's paper, discussed below, as well as my limited understanding of our lives as gift (here placed into the service of those who can no longer take care of themselves), leads me to conclude that withholding of nutrition and hydration for those in a persistent vegetative state is very different from withholding life support from someone who lacks the brain function to keep the bodily system functioning as a “unitary organic life.”

Perhaps we have co-bloggers or readers who have studied these issues (and actually read the Pope’s statement), and can provide a more insightful and nuanced response to these developments and the cultural legal debate over end of life issues.