Topic : Euthanasia
Morally Appropriate
In another resolution, verbal boundaries were immediately drawn. “Human beings are made in the image of God and are, therefore, of inestimable worth. God has given people the highest dignity of all creation. Such human dignity prohibits euthanasia; that is, actively causing a persons death.” Moral questions are then raised about medical technologies that result in prolonging the dying process beyond its normal course.” which often causes great suffering, not only for the patient, but also for the family and caregivers. NAE “believes that in cases where patients are terminally ill, death appears imminent and treatment offers no medical hope for a cure, it is morally appropriate to request the withdrawal of life-support systems allowing natural death to occur.”
More specifically, “where there is clear medical indication that the patient has suffered brain death [permanent unconscious state, not equivalent to a coma], removal of any extraordinary life-support system is morally appropriate and allows the dying process to proceed. Under such circumstances, action is best taken where there is guidance from a signed ‘living will’ or durable power of attorney for health care.” Where neither exists, “the decision to withdrawal life-support should be made by the family and/or closest friends in consultation with a member of the clergy, when available, and the medical staff.”
Nuremberg Trials
This downward slide was explained dramatically by Dr. Leo Alexander in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, written in 1949.
Dr. Alexander was a consultant to the Secretary of War in the Nuremberg Trials. He had extraordinary access to accused Nazi war criminals in the medical community. Writing from that unique perspective, Dr. Alexander argued that so-called “compassionate killing” of the terminally ill inevitably set the stage for the Holocaust. He wrote:
Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude . that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted and finally all non-Germans.
Before his death, Dr. Alexander told a friend that trends in our country were “much like Germany in the ’20s and ’30s. The barriers against killing are coming down.”
Resource
- Immortality, the Other Side of Death, G. R. Habermas, J. P. Moreland, Nelson, 1992, pp. 209ff
