Ideas for Legal Reform in Schiavo-type Cases
As promised, here is an article in the current edition of the Weekly Standard magazine containing some of my initial thoughts on legal reforms that could help protect the lives of devalued people like Terri Schiavo.
The article speaks for itself, but allow me to share just a few additional thoughts: Reporters have been asking me if the goal of new legislation would be to force patients to stay alive as long as possible and to do away with written advance directives that allow people to decide in advance what kind of care they want and don't want if they become incapacitated.
The reporters are following this line of inquiry after being told by some who seek to discredit the defenders of Terri's life that we want to dismantle the laws of informed consent and refusal. Of course, these charges are ridiculous. Indeed, at a time when many bioethicists promote "futile care theory" that would give doctors the right to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment to patients one bioethicist once notoriously called "biologically tenacious", written advance directives are more important than ever TO ENSURE THAT REQUESTED CARE IS ACTUALLY RECEIVED.
Now, I readily admit that I don't believe that it is moral to remove feeding tubes from people based on quality of life assessments. But I am not the dictator and the society as a whole clearly has a different view. Nevertheless, if someone wants to die by dehydration in cases of severe brain injury, they owe it to their families and society to put that directive in writing. Absent that, every reasonable benefit of every doubt should go to providing food and water. Better to err on the side of life than a slow death by dehydration.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:26 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Thanks. As I hear of specific legislative proposals and/or hearings are planned on such laws, I'll post them here. In the meantime, how about e-mailing state and fed. reps about closing the holes in the safety net that the Schiavo case revealed?
As an international person, I cannot interfere with legislation in the USA, however, what happens in the USA is of interest because of the likelihood that there will be others who attempt to make similar changes in Australia.
I can only speak about family experience concerning the pressure that is placed when a loved one is in bad shape as a result of a stroke. This is what happened to my father. The first stroke left him brain damaged but he was still "able". The behaviour he exhibited as a result of the brain damage is a very different matter. However, he also suffered a heart problem and was fitted with a pacemaker, then he suffered a second and more serious stroke. He almost died as a result of aspiration pneumonia.
The staff at the small country hospital had put it to my mother that she should post a DNR. However, mum believes that we should not make decisions based upon "quality of life" and she resisted the pressure that was placed upon her. When dad was transferred from the country hospital to Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne, the doctors and welfare staff again attempted to get my mother to post a DNR. Again mum refused to listen to them. The remainder of my family in Melbourne were in complete agreement with mum's decisions.
Sadly, 5 months after the second stroke my dad had a more deadly turn. He was taken from the nursing home to Monash emergency. At that point his blood glucose level was extremely high. The hospital said that they could do nothing else for him and discharged him back to the nursing home. He passed away the next day, with most members of the family being present. I was not there because I live in Sydney, and my sister had just returned home when he passed away. My son was also not present.
It was a different matter with my aunt because she had "died" in my parent's car, and was revived by the hospital emergency department. That meant that my cousin had to make the decision to turn off the machine. This is the kind of medical intervention that I object to in the first place. I believe that my aunt, having already died in the car should not have been revived.
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