Israel Not Doing Euthanasia by Machine
This story in the Telegraph is stupid. Israel has passed a law permitting life support to be terminated. That isn't euthanasia as it is now commonly understood: It is ending unwanted life-sustaining treatment.
I am not criticizing Jewish law, but the legal analysis engaged in by the Israeli lawmakers seems very bizarre to me. Under Jewish law, it is apparently illegal to kill someone in the medical context, which is good. But Israeli lawmakers want doctors to be able to remove unwanted life support, but worry that to do so would be killing. So, they have decided to have machines do it, as if programming a machine isn't the same thing as a person doing it.
This seems so unncessary. Removing a respirator that is not wanted is not killing. If the person dies--he or she might live--it would be from underlying condition, not by an act of man.
So, despite the headline, Isreal has not legalized euthanasia. It has permitted the refusal of unwanted treatment, but has done so in an unnecessarily convoluted manner.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:31 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
What is the moral difference between euthanasia and withdraw of life support?
If death by withdraw of life-support is OK because the person won't live, then why is euthanasia bad if euthanasia is restricted to people who won't live?
If an "act of man" makes euthanasia bad, then why is withdraw of life-support OK when an act of man is necessary to withdraw life-support, which will certainly lead to death?
If "life matters" as you put it, then why does life not "matter" with the withdraw of life support? Your approach to life matters seems to be that life matters but cannot supercede one's personal decision to die by withdraw of life support, but this is contradicted by your belief that personal decision to die is immoral through euthanasia.
If human "life matters," then does not human suffering matter as well? If human suffering matters, then why is alleviating suffering bad through euthanasia?
To me, all the justifications for the withdraw of life-support are present in euthanasia of the terminally ill.
In this country, this issue has been dealt with extensively, with the Supreme Court ruling unanimously that there is a huge difference between the two. In euthanasia, the patient is intentionally being killed. In removing unwanted medical treatment, the patient dies of the underlying disease. But, with the exception of food and fluids, the patient might not die at all. For example, Karen Ann Quinlan died ten years after her respirator was removed.
Secondly, the issue is not a right to die. There is no right to die. There is a right not to have one's body invaded by unwanted procedures. Thus, one can refuse surgery, or chemo, or antibiotics. But that is not the same as having the right to be overdosed with poison.
As to why euthanasia is bad medicine and worse public policy, I have written a book on that issue, and many articles that are in the archives section.
Thanks for writing.
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