A patient is in desperate agony. He had a terminal disease of the blood, can hardly breathe and cannot keep any food down. Pneumonia is about to set in.
Dr Priest takes one look at him and called in the nurses. “”Quick, put him on a respirator,” he said. “”Give him some anti-biotics to prevent the pneumonia. Connect him to a dialysis machine to clear his blood. Give him some morphine for the pain and connect a drip to his arm to feed him.”
The man lives on in a daze or pain with the help of medical technology.
Some days later Dr Priest goes on leave and is replaced by Dr Levite. Dr Levite disconnects the respirator and the dialysis machine and stops the anti-biotics and the drip feed. He continues the morphine, and the patient continues to go from daze to pain. But Dr Levite thinks it will not be long now _ now that the machines have been disconnected.
The patient lives on and a week later, the patient’s family gathers around the night-shift doctor, a Dr Samaritan, and say their loved one is in worse pain, is starving to death and wants to end it as soon as possible. Could anything be done? Yes, says Dr Samaritan, and tells the family to make their last goodbyes. And then Dr Samaritan goes into the patient and says, “”I have your last injection of morphine.”
The patient says, “”Thank God.” And Dr Samaritan gives him a double over-dose, and shortly thereafter the patient dies in dignity and peace.
(subs: leave this next sentence in Old English please)
Which of these three doctors, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that was in the nursing home?
Significantly, the original Good Samaritan story in Luke’s Gospel starts with “”a certain lawyer” asking Jesus, Who is thy neighbour?
Lawyers have been answering their own question in one guise or another ever since.
Last week in England, the House of Lords decided that treatment could be withdrawn from a 21-year-old man who has been in a vegetative state since the Hillsborough stadium disaster three years ago.
The case was similar to other notorious “”right to die” cases. The living vegetable is usually quite young, and the circumstances that brought him to that state are usually very sudden _ a car accident, a collapsing stadium or the ingestion of a mixture of drugs an alcohol.
The US Supreme Court had a similar case a decade ago, and no doubt our High Court will find itself making a similar ruling before long.
But you won’t find any nursing-home residents being the subject of higher-court actions and great moral debate in the papers _ a quick double dose of morphine and withheld anti-biotics for pneumonia, and Uncle Fred is on his way.
“”He had a good innings, at 79, and it was a relief for us all.”
A quick death certificate, no questions asked and the family is relieved of three or four years of visiting semi-continent, semi-conscious Fred who is chewing through his remaining AMP benefits with nursing home fees while children and grand-children struggle with mortgages and school fees.
There are no House of Lords decisions for the Uncle Freds or the Aunt Mables of this world (or soon not to be of this world). So what is the difference between Uncle Fred and the stadium boy?
Perhaps it is more practical than moral or legal. Uncle Fred degenerated slowly and his time is up anyway. The stadium boy was rushed to hospital and because of his youth and the long life expectancy at stake, the best medical gadgets were applied in the hope he would recover. Weeks later, everyone realised he would not. But it would take an active step to take the medical gadgets away which in turn would inevitably mean that shortly afterwards, the boy would die.
What would cause that death: the collapse of the stadium or the turning off the life-support system? Technology has created a new class of case. We now appear to have four “”right to die” classes: just not treating someone; withdrawing previously applied medical technology; giving someone the wherewithal to kill themselves; and actively killing a helpless person upon their request.
The first has always been legal; there is no legal requirement to apply or accept life-saving treatment in the case of adults. The second is now legal in the US and Britain upon the request of the family.
The third and fourth are now illegal, but now technology has provided an intermediate class of cases, the logical jump to the next two stages is not so great. And in the face of an aging population, more people will seek a change in the law’s definition of neighbour and Good Samaritan.