Posted on 07/20/2019 11:28:08 AM PDT by ebb tide
July 19, 2019 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The Pontifical Academy of life (PAL), the Vatican’s advisory board regarding the values of life and family, has announced the removal of a Portuguese bioethicist from its membership because of his views on “end of life” issues, an apparent reference to his endorsement of euthanasia for those with terminal illnesses.
The decision to remove Professor Rui Nunes, president of the Portuguese Association for Bioethics, represents a deviation from the direction of the PAL under the leadership of Pope Francis and Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia. In the last three years, Francis has removed strongly pro-life and pro-family members and has appointed individuals with a record of deviance from Catholic doctrines regarding bioethics, including pro-abortion University of Oxford professor Nigel Biggar; Professor Marie-Jo Thiel, who openly denounces the Catholic Church’s condemnation of sodomy and contraception; and Fr. Maurizio Chiodi, who claims that contraception may be morally obligatory.
Nunes was named for the position in late February of this year, and his appointment occurred in April. The PAL states in a press release that a review of his writings led to a reconsideration of the appointment, but Portuguese media sources say the review itself was provoked by an outcry by the Portuguese faithful regarding Nunes’s pro-euthanasia views.
“After several months, taking into account the publication of various articles in the Portuguese media as well as a more profound evaluation of the scientific work of the Professor regarding the end of life, the Academy decided, with the complete agreement of Professor Rui Nunes himself, to revoke the nomination by means of a letter that the president of this Academy signed and sent to the Portuguese professor,” the PAL stated in a press release published on its site.
The announcement follows statements made by Nunes in the Portuguese media endorsing “voluntary euthanasia” for patients who do not wish to continue living due to an illness. He is currently on a campaign to obtain a national referendum on the issue following the defeat of four different pro-euthanasia bills in 2018 and was advocating such a referendum as early as 2009.
Nunes’s longstanding position in favor of permitting the killing of the unborn was not mentioned in the PAL’s announcement. As early as 2007, Nunes was advocating changing the ethical code of the Portuguese Order of Physicians, the nation’s medical association, to ethically permit abortions in cases of rape, deformity of the child, and danger to the mother’s health.
This year, he openly defended countries that allow people to kill their unborn children if they think they won’t have a good “quality of life,” stating to one reporter, “There are situations in which the reproductive autonomy of the woman justifies the voluntary interruption of pregnancy. Apart from cases of rape and risk to the mother’s health, it also applies to cases in which the expected quality of life of the fetus is so affected that it is proper for the mother or the couple to decide.”
The appointment of Nunes “was received with surprise by the Portuguese Catholic media, where Rui Nunes was already known, most of all because his positions regarding controversial issues like those related to bioethics had gradually distanced himself from the official doctrine of the Catholic Church,” writes the Portuguese news service Observador.
“Sources have told the Observador that the appointment created discomfort in the Catholic media, where the appointment was not understood. This discomfort, moreover, motivated a group of Portuguese Catholics to send to the Vatican a set of articles written by Rui Nunes on controversial issues like euthanasia and medically assisted procreation — articles that sought to change the Vatican’s opinion regarding its relationship with the Portuguese academic.”
Both the PAL and Nunes indicated that the professor would continue to work with the organization despite their “different visions,” only now on a more informal basis.
“In any case, we are certain that there will be more opportunities to work together on issues relevant to bioethics that will arise in the future, even with different visions and different anthropological and theological foundations,” stated the PAL in its press release.
The PAL and Professor Nunes “now understand that it would be more profitable to have a more informal collaboration, permitting a kind of collaboration in which Professor Rui Nunes can maintain all of his freedom and independence in the defense of problems linked to contemporary bioethics, particularly the defense of the Living Will, the implementation of policies of Gender Equality, or the application of the most modern technologies of Medically Assisted Procreation,” said Nunes himself in a press release.
Ping
"What might be called managed deaths, as distinct from suicides, are now the norm in the United States, doctors say. The American Hospital Association says that about 70 percent of the deaths in hospitals happen after a decision has been made to withhold treatment. Other patients die when the medication they are taking to ease their pain depresses, then stops, their breathing.
There is less information on the deaths that occur in nursing homes and in private homes. But doctors say they often discharge patients from a hospital with the implicit understanding that they are sending them home to die, with a morphine drip for pain or without the ministrations of what they would call overzealous doctors at a hospital who might start antibiotics to quell a fever or drugs to stabilize a fluttering heart.
''It's called passive euthanasia,'' said Dr. Norman Fost, director of the Program in Medical Ethics at the University of Wisconsin.
It is, and has always been, a patient's right to refuse or discontinue a particular treatment if the treatment is futile, i.e. without or nearly without positive effect, or when it is very burdensome, uncomfortable, or even excessively expensive, especially when death is in any case imminent.
This is not euthanasia, because the patient is not choosing death --- although death may be foreseeable. If for instance, a patient or his proxy decided to discontinue futile mechanical ventilation, it would not be considered "undesirable" or "a complication" if he unexpectedly continued breathing on his own. The fact everybody's OK with him breathing on his own, indicates that they were not trying to kill him by suffocation.
In contrast, euthanasia, properly called such, has a prompt death as its goal. For instance, cutting off nutrition or hydration so as to speed the patient's death by starvation/dehydration, is murder. On the other other hand, cutting off nutrition/hydration because the patient's body is no longer able to assimilate nutrients, and tube feeding was causing bloating, pain, reflux and danger of asphyxia, is NOT passive euthanasia.
I hope everybody understands this distinction.
That being said: yes, all too often "terminal sedation" --- e.g. upping the morphine beyond what is needed for adequate pain management, for the intended purpose of suppressing respiration: that's euthanasia. Its goal is, precisely, accelerated death.
I would agree there is a distinction between refusing or ending futile treatment when death is imminent vs performing an action solely intended to kill the patient. I also believe there are gray areas of treatment and non-treatment associated with this subject.
It's interesting that you mentioned "upping the morphine beyond what is needed for adequate pain management, for the intended purpose of suppressing respiration".
I believe this is precisely what happened to my brother-in-law, who was dying of stage-4 cancer. I think this type of "treatment" occurs more often than we might imagine with terminal patients. In light of my brother-in-law's prognosis and what he was suffering, I thought him dying with "no pain" was a good thing.
A person acting in good faith needs to be very careful weighing pain management vs. the preserving of life itself. It requires technical expertise. It requires frequent monitoring. And it requires a firm conviction that even a dwindling life, has value in itself.
Life is not to be extended irrationally and indefinitely via a fanatical "Frankenstin vitalism". At he same time, life is not to be brushed aside via a brisk "Kevorkian pragmatism" as something now worth zero, even when death is sitting at the bedside. Life, even in a dying person, is still a good in itself.
A person in good faith recognizes that, even when a cure is out of the question, and comfort care has rightly become the first priority, life is the highest medical value. Nobody is healthier once they've died. And as Flannery O'Connor said, "You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead".
Then, on the other hand, if the person making the decisions is not quite in good faith --- has an interest, say, in the patient simply exiting quickly and economically, with the least bother for all concerned--it can go very badly, very quickly. This kind of person will use terminal sedation for a quick kill every single time.
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