Friday, May 19, 2006

SEDATE, WAIT, INITIATE!
ANDREA CLARK'S SISTER, LANORE, AGREES!
Bioethicking death Protocol:

Leslie,

This is exactly what happened to Andrea. The night before they initiated the "pain management" program, Andrea told me, "I miss you." This, despite the fact she'd had a "devastating" bleed in her brain a couple of weeks before. Beginning the day the hospital began their pain management program, I lost more and more of my sister. The first week she was still communicating, though she was knocked out. Every week after, her communications grew more faint and more far between. By the last week, she seemed to be gone somewhere else, even though her pain meds had been cut considerably by her new doctor.

You're right. This is exactly what they do. Why is this not considered murder? If giving a patient an overdose of pain medication to cause death is unethical, which I was told by the chief ethicist at St. Luke's, that it is indeed unethical, then why is a slow overdose to cause death any more ethical? Is it more ethical because it's harder to prove? Is ethics just a matter of evidence?

Lanore Dixon

1 comment:

  1. Everyone thinks abortion's a negative - better not to have the unwanted pregnancy for sure.

    Never understood though, how "prolifers" can fail to make the distinction between the earliest stages of egg fertilization and human beings. Yes, of course, it would become a human being if the pregnancy weren't terminated. An acorn can become a tree. But an acorn is an acorn, not a tree. A newly fertilzed ovum is something that can become a human being; but that doesn't make it a human being.

    There are so many actual children around the world suffering horribly every day. I wish the Christian right would make half as much noise on their behalf as it does on behalf of eggs and stem cells.

    Btw, every time a woman has a period or a man "spills his seed," we've just lost more precious human life. Maybe we ought to try and save the stuff...

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