March 24, 2005
HORRIFIED BY LIFE (via The Other Brother):
The Science and Ethics of the Schiavo Case (Jon Hamilton, March 24, 2005, NPR Morning Edition)
Doctors and bioethicists worry that the Terri Schiavo case has set back their work by decades because of Congress's decision to step in and reverse a judicial decision. Jon Hamilton visits a New York hospital team of doctors, bioethicists and mediators who work with families of patients in vegetative states. The group routinely deals with complicated "end-of-life" decisions.
What's most revealing in the report is that the question is presented as exclusively one of medicine, rather than of morality. What's most chilling is the bioethicist who complains: "I can not understand how Congress has the power to reach in and reverse a Court decision that had reached the end of the process, so I am quite frankly horrified. The burden will go on the family and the default position will be to keep patients on food anf fluid and treatment." An "ethics" whose default position is death rather than life is not even worthy of the name.
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 24, 2005 8:15 AM
Comments
Must've have studied under Singer at Princeton.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at March 24, 2005 10:14 AMAlmost as bad is the belief that the judiciary ALWAYS trumps the legislature.
Where do these people think judges get their power? From God? Would that it were so.
Posted by: jim hamlen at March 24, 2005 10:36 AMI don't know enough about the woman's condition to have an opinion, but apparently it is an open question whether there is, in fact, an option of death over life.
Depending, I guess, on how you define life.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 24, 2005 8:56 PM
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