July 23, 2006
Choose life
Via Batesline comes this article in Opinion Journal about a woman pressured to let her father "die with dignity".
A medical resident--we called her "Dr. Death"--at the Intensive Care Unit at Long Island's North Shore Hospital chased us down the hallway."Your husband wants to die," she told my mother, again. Just minutes before I had asked her to leave us alone.
"He can't even talk," I reminded her.
"He motioned with his hands when we tried to put in the feeding tube," she said.
Not exactly informed consent, I pointed out as we turned our backs on her and walked down the hallway, trying to avert our eyes from the other patients in the ICU that night, each of them at various points in the so-called "twilight zone" between life and death.
....
"Dr. Death" was just one of several. A new resident appeared the next day, this one a bit more diplomatic but again urging us to allow my father to "die with dignity." And the next day came yet another, who opened with the words, "We're getting mixed messages from your family," before I shut him up. I've written extensively about practice of bioethics--which, for the most part, I do not find especially ethical--but never did I dream that our moral compass had gone this far askew. My father, 85, was heading ineluctably toward death. Though unconscious, his brain, as far as anyone could tell, had not been touched by either the cancer or the blood clot. He was not in a "persistent vegetative state" (itself a phrase subject to broad interpretation), that magic point at which family members are required to pull the plug--or risk the accusation that they are right-wing Christians.
The family ends up pretending they are religious Jews in order to fend off the people eager to kill the patient. The man, of course, survives--with dignity. Read the whole thing.
If I've said it once, I've said it a million times--should fate find me unable to communicate my wishes, always make them error on the side of keeping me alive. I believe in G-d, but I don't believe in an afterlife, to me this is all I have and I want to make sure I'm given every chance to enjoy my life here.
As a culture, we have to examine how it is that we have this amazing technology to allow people to survive longer, yet the instinct seems to be that the technology shouldn't be "wasted" on some. It isn't just Christians who believe we should always err on the side of life.
Posted by Karol at July 23, 2006 03:45 PM | TrackBackTechnorati Tags: Life Hospitals Euthanasia
Great story, just odd that she had to add the seeming non-sequitor in the end about going after Evangelicals for, well, evangelizing.
Posted by: Sean at July 24, 2006 01:19 AMThe snark about evangelicals is supposed to show that not only is she not religious, but she actually holds deep-felt religious belief in contempt (don't want anybody to think I'm so gauche as to like those hayseeds)....and yet she'd trust her life with these yokels more than the overly-educated hospital staff.
One doesn't need to be particularly religious or believe in an afterlife to side with the pro-lifers, as Raving Atheist and Nat Hentoff have shown. I happen to be a believing Catholic, but my statement has always been -- we're all going to die someday, what's the hurry?
If someone goes on about "life worth living", I wonder why they're so sure that someone else's life is so worthless while their own is precious. I have a few relatives who work with the profoundly retarded, and those folks seem to be enjoying life to the extent that they can. Who's to say they would be better off dead? Who's to say they're less important than me?
Posted by: meep at July 24, 2006 06:31 AMI thought an otherwise good article was ruined by that bit in the end.
But I'm offended that so many conservative Christians believe that theirs is the only path to salvation. I'm sick of being proselytized.
Honestly, how often are Jews (or those of various faith) proselytized? I live in Michigan, and I occasionally get some JW's at the door (I'm Catholic) - I really could care less.
Posted by: carin at July 24, 2006 07:51 AMThanks Karol for posting this.
I agree with meep, too: I believe in the afterlife, but I'm not in a rush.
As for "believing that theirs is the only way to salvation," well, that's because it's central to our faith, whether we are "conservative" or not. Heaven forbid we believe our faith is true!
Posted by: Fallen Sparrow at July 24, 2006 10:43 AMAre you kidding?
The Mormons are still baptizing dead Jews.
Posted by: Gerard at July 24, 2006 03:57 PM"The snark about evangelicals is supposed to show that not only is she not religious, but she actually holds deep-felt religious belief in contempt."
I think you might be reading too much into that comment.
Posted by: Gerard at July 24, 2006 03:59 PMI'm getting deja vu about this story. Including the belief that because of her highly suspicious claims that people are trying to convert her, the underlying story aboout her father should be taken with a grain of salt. If you are so overly sensitive that you see proselytizers everywhere, you may be overly sensitive to a physcian bringing up questions of treatment. You may not agree with the medical ethics talked about, but it is an issue a doctor should talk about with his patient. I'm not convinced that this lady didn't blow it out of proportion.
Posted by: sam at July 24, 2006 05:57 PMI don't see what one has to do with the other.
First of all, the idea that doctors don't try to invest themselves with God-like powers-at least, a certain portion of the medical community-is absurd.
You need look no further than the recent self-serving, ghoulish justifications made by the NO hospital that euthanized some elderly patients to discover that.
Secondly, the idea that any Jew who is concerned about overzealous missionaries is paranoid is mistaken.
