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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (3425)	12/24/2002 5:13:16 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7720

Let's try the other end of life. Surely, being a defender of human life at any time in any form, you must object to these: Your wife has cancer. It has metastasized. She is either in severe pain or drugged to the point where she is not rational and barely conscious. The doctors- -several are involved, of course- -tell you there is absolutely no hope of a cure. Chemotherapy has failed. To attempt to surgically remove all the cancer they know of (which is very unlikely to be all there is) would certainly kill her. The surgeon proposes another operation. No cure, but he says it might extend her life by 3 to 6 months. You refuse permission to operate. Did you (morally) just commit murder? Had you agreed, she might have lived longer. Your mother has had a stroke. Then another. Then another. There is some, but not much, conscious brain function left. She can't converse, although occasionally she mutters a few words unrelated to anything happening or said. She cannot feed herself; that is done by a feeding tube. It is obviously uncomfortable because she repeatedly tears the tube out after a while. After this goes on for a few months with no improvement, you sign a "Do not resuscitate" order, which specifically directs the doctors and hospital not to re-insert the feeding tube if it is dislodged again - which you and they know will happen. It does; she dies a week later. Have you committed murder? She'd very likely still be alive without that order.