Is this killing someone?

[Johnboy60]

Cutting off someone's food intake in the hospital. I know someone that just died from having the hospital stop feeding them. They put it in a living will to be done.

 

[TuxAme]

Yes. It's essentially passive euthanasia (murder). The fact that it was requested is irrelevant.

 

[JackRT]

Cutting off someone's food intake in the hospital. I know someone that just died from having the hospital stop feeding them. They put it in a living will to be done.

That is their prerogative.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Cutting off someone's food intake in the hospital. I know someone that just died from having the hospital stop feeding them. They put it in a living will to be done.

Yes.

But there is an exception where withholding food is acceptable. Close to death, various organs start shutting down and food cannot be metabolized. In such situations food is actually counterproductive and withholding food is not starving them of nutrition. Other than that, withholding food is wrong but sadly common in hospitals. It is often quite legal and you may not be able to stop it.

 

[chevyontheriver]

That is their prerogative.

Euthanasia is legal in Canada, eh? Legal in some states in the USA but practiced on the QT in many others.

 

[Sabertooth]

Yes, usually that is killing somebody. (Brain dead people can eat, too, so that isn't as clear-cut.)

 

[HTacianas]

Cutting off someone's food intake in the hospital. I know someone that just died from having the hospital stop feeding them. They put it in a living will to be done.

I was faced with the decision of having a feeding tube surgically implanted in my father after he had a stroke. I decided to have it done, believing that I was obligated to feed him. While I told his doctors I did not want him to be put on any life support I felt that a feeding tube was different. Thankfully, he died the night before they had it scheduled. I say thankfully because the stroke had caused so much damage he wasn't my father anymore.

Some years later my grandfather was in a nursing home, effectively dying of old age. He went into a coma and my aunt was chosen to make medical decisions for him. She chose not to have a feeding tube for him. He died of starvation a few weeks later. I do not question her decision.

 

[URA]

I'm unsure about this; on one hand, starving someone to death is a form of murder, and clearly this person isn't acting in any way to warrant self-defense.

But, if you have to be hooked up to life support, are you really alive? Can you honestly say someone is alive if the only reason their heart is beating is because an expensive machine makes it beat, and they're incapable of doing anything but laying there?

Still, I would like to hear an official Catholic answer to this question.

 

[TuxAme]

I'm unsure about this; on one hand, starving someone to death is a form of murder, and clearly this person isn't acting in any way to warrant self-defense.

But, if you have to be hooked up to life support, are you really alive? Can you honestly say someone is alive if the only reason their heart is beating is because an expensive machine makes it beat, and they're incapable of doing anything but laying there?

Still, I would like to hear an official Catholic answer to this question.

AFAIK, the Church teaches that extraordinary measures to support life are not always necessary, but ordinary means are. Feeding falls under the ordinary means.

 

[St_Worm2]

Euthanasia is legal in Canada, eh? Legal in some states in the USA but practiced on the QT in many others.

Euthanasia is legal in certain States now? Are you sure??

I know that Hospice withholds food and water once a patient has reached a certain point (they do that in all 50 States), but that's hardly the same thing as Jack Kevorkian was championing (IOW, the ending of a still viable life human by chemical or other external means).

Thanks!

--David

 

[Halbhh]

Cutting off someone's food intake in the hospital. I know someone that just died from having the hospital stop feeding them. They put it in a living will to be done.

Why did they put it in their will? Under what conditions?

Conditions matter, because they can include such things as a brain that is dead for example. In that example case the soul has already departed.

 

[Hieronymus]

Yes. It's essentially passive euthanasia (murder). The fact that it was requested is irrelevant.

Passive euthanasia is not murder, it's letting someone die by themselves..

 

[Hieronymus]

I'm unsure about this; on one hand, starving someone to death is a form of murder, and clearly this person isn't acting in any way to warrant self-defense.

Is it really starving someone to death when the person can not eat by themselves? (like when in a coma and no prospects)

 

[Strathos]

I think the more pertinent question is whether it's morally preferable to let a suffering person die or force them to go on suffering with no possibility of relief.

 

[joshua 1 9]

That is their prerogative.

Life is the right choice but we all have to choose. Life or death, sickness or health, blessing or curse, poverty or prosperity. Gladness and Joy or Misery and Sorrow. Freedom and Liberty or Bondage and Captivity. These are the choices we all have to make.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Conditions matter, because they can include such things as a brain that is dead for example. In that example case the soul has already departed.

Actually the cells in the brain do not die right away. Under some conditions it is possible to revive someone up to 20 minutes. (CPR for example) In this photo the cell did not actually die until they tried to reintroduce oxygen. If they could resolve this issue there would be more they could be able to revive people.

 

[Chesterton]

Yeah, that Kevorkian fellow, he claimed to have killed 130 people. That seems a bit much for a doctor. I haven't killed anywhere near that many, and I'm not even a doctor.

 

[Halbhh]

Actually the cells in the brain do not die right away. Under some conditions it is possible to revive someone up to 20 minutes. (CPR for example) In this photo the cell did not actually die until they tried to reintroduce oxygen. If they could resolve this issue there would be more they could be able to revive people.

Yes, that is a very different than typical situation we are discussing here. I've read an experiment where with the right drugs introduced to the brain a dog with a stopped heart even at room temperature was revived after 16 minutes (if i recall) with no brain damage. That's very unlike a typical situation of real brain death in a hospital patient though, where the cause could be infection for instance.

But that fact that after the heart stops, previously healthy neurons aren't dead so quickly is very interesting in itself as another topic.

 

[zephcom]

Cutting off someone's food intake in the hospital. I know someone that just died from having the hospital stop feeding them. They put it in a living will to be done.

This is just another aspect of the controversy over Dying with Dignity. Or, to put it another way, should the dying person have any say in how their death will occur?

If this thing with the someone you know happened in the hospital and it followed the explicit instruction of the person who was dying, I would have to say, "No. It is not killing them."

It is, instead, honoring the wishes of the person which defined the way they wanted to die under those special circumstances. It is the ultimate act of love to grant them the dignity to die as they have chosen.

 

[PloverWing]

I think of a feeding tube as a terribly intrusive procedure to force a person to endure, and I have specifically forbidden it in my own advance directive. A feeding tube is different from being given food to eat in the normal way; it seems to me a very artificial forced prolongation of life. Is it truly Catholic teaching that patients are not permitted to refuse a feeding tube?