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Post by showmedot on Jan 7, 2014 13:09:03 GMT -6
The Jahi McMath case is a non sequitur--no brain activity anywhere, no circulation to the brain--obviously dead.
But I'm still wondering why anyone would feel obliged to keep someone like Terri Schiavo functioning on a primitive level.
Schiavo's case differed in her still having a functioning brain stem which enhanced her parents' conviction that their daughter was alive because her heart beat and lungs breathed.
But is that life when instrumentation can now determine that cognitive areas of the brain are non-functioning? Is it still a person when there is no longer any capabity for communication, thought, directed movement, emotion--any of the purposeful behaviors regarded as living? Is it a "life" that must be preserved when extraordinary means are keeping a marginally functional body alive? Is the fact that the body absorbs tube-administered nutrients, breathes and has a beating heart a life?
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Post by malleodei on Jan 7, 2014 13:39:05 GMT -6
I have little desire to re-hash the Terri Schiavo case again, but the way I see it, the issue is whether or not the Terri Schiavo case consisted of extraordinary means. People are going to differ whether or not a feeding tube consists of ordinary means.
This question, in a way, was taken up as early as the 4th century by St. Basil the Great in writing about the Art of Medicine:
Whatever requires an undue amount of thought or trouble or involves a large expenditure of effort and causes our whole life to revolve, as it were, around solicitude for the flesh must be avoided by Christians....Therefore, whether we follow the precepts of the medical art or decline to have recourse to them...we should hold to our objective of pleasing God and see to it that the soul’s benefit is assured, fulfilling thus the Apostle’s precept: ‘Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God’” cf. 1 Corinthians 10:31.
Granted that medicine has changed quite a bit since the 4th century, but I think that the principles can still hold, from a Christian worldview.
From the perspective of Terri Schiavo, many have held that she did not require a large expenditure of effort that caused one's whole life to revolve around the flesh.
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Post by showmedot on Jan 7, 2014 13:54:21 GMT -6
So, you're qualifying someone with no cognitive function as a life worthy of being sustained? Just as long as the body can be maintained without undue effort, we should consider that a life?
What about the resources needed to do that in terms of nursing care, liquid food suitable for a stomach tube, adequate housing, basic medical care to keep what's a non-comprehending body functioning?
Mechanical function that isn't terribly arduous or costly to maintain must be sustained even when we're reasonably certain that there is nothing inside the body anymore that constitutes a person? No capacity for emotion, awareness, etc., nothing left constituting personhood--how does that qualify as living?
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Post by malleodei on Jan 7, 2014 14:07:24 GMT -6
So, you're qualifying someone with no cognitive function as a life worthy of being sustained? Just as long as the body can be maintained without undue effort, we should consider that a life? Yep Many believe that that is not undue care. In the particular case of Terri Schiavo, I agree with that. Bingo. There's the problem. Personhood reduced to utility. |
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Post by showmedot on Jan 7, 2014 16:59:27 GMT -6
How is there any "personhood" when there's nothing there but breathing, heartbeat and relexive reactions?
Doesn't cognition have any value?
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Post by stevec on Jan 8, 2014 14:35:01 GMT -6
So, you're qualifying someone with no cognitive function as a life worthy of being sustained? Just as long as the body can be maintained without undue effort, we should consider that a life? Yep Many believe that that is not undue care. In the particular case of Terri Schiavo, I agree with that. Bingo. There's the problem. Personhood reduced to utility. Bingo, religious beliefs reduced to irrelevance. |
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Post by Flitzerbiest on Jan 8, 2014 19:02:19 GMT -6
So, you're qualifying someone with no cognitive function as a life worthy of being sustained? Just as long as the body can be maintained without undue effort, we should consider that a life? Yep Many believe that that is not undue care. In the particular case of Terri Schiavo, I agree with that. Bingo. There's the problem. Personhood reduced to utility. How can someone be so smart and so stupid simultaneously. Oh wait…SEE ALSO AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MINE, EARLY ADULTHOOD. |
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