Introduction
A time comes in everyone’s lives when they fall sick or become involved in a serious accident of some sort. Its part of our inherent immortality and human vulnerability and cannot be avoided. As long as we are on this earth, perfect health and overall wellness is impossible to achieve.
Even with this knowledge, very few people would like to even imagine that they could someday end up in a vegetative state as a result of an accident or health complications. I, admittedly, am one such person. Nevertheless, I am alive to the fact that, regardless of any attempts I make at being healthy, an accident could occur that may require me to be put on life support. It’s a scary thought but one that needs to be faced head on.
Discussion
I often ask myself what I would want my family to do in such a scenario. Should they terminate my life support or should they keep me on? As part of their moral obligation towards me and themselves, I would most certainly expect them to keep me on life support but only for as long as it is not burdensome to them financially and/ or emotionally. The Roman Catholic Church’s stance, one I support wholeheartedly, is that termination of life support should be seen within the prism of ordinary and extraordinary means.
In other words, if the support one is to receive is ordinary and not overly burdensome to self and others, it should by all means be maintained. If, on the other hand, it is extraordinary in that it proves to be excessively burdensome to myself and others, then termination may or may not be morally acceptable depending on one’s choice. I, for one, would not want to put a strain on my family and would expect them to terminate my life support if the situation was getting out of hand.
Termination of life support when a person’s condition is not burdensome is tantamount to the premature termination of life. Since the patient was alive before and during their time on life support, hurriedly terminating that life support is akin to ending that life. As the name even suggests, a life support machine was in the first place created to support the existing life. To remove the support is thus the same as not supporting that life. The moment one pulls the plug on a patient without exhausting all possibilities of extending that life, they have actually cut short that life.
Being put on life support should not spell doom for the patient. Many people assume that as soon as a person is in a vegetative state and on life support, the person has died or will never recover their mental faculties if they ever wake up from a coma. This is not necessarily the case.
I remember only too well the recent story that hit the headlines of the Polish man who woke up after 19 years in a coma. He had had an accident in 1988 when Poland was still a Communist country only to wake up to a totally new world! The wife recounted that she had constantly prayed for her husband and that God had finally answered her prayers. While it’s a rare case, it’s a prime example that people can still wake up from a coma. Therefore, if my family wanted to keep me on child support, no one has the right to interfere with their wish.
Euthanasia has come as a new and fashionable way of camouflaging the indiscriminate termination of life support. Mercy killing, as it is often referred to, is being promoted by some as a moral and sympathetic way of relieving the suffering of terminally ill or badly injured patients. It is often at the request of the patient hence most argue that as long as someone wants to die, they have the right to as part of their individual liberty. While sounding plausible enough, this argument holds very little water. Most terminally or badly injured patients are on anesthetics and other forms of medication that can cause hallucinations and a clouding of judgment.
Consequently, any decisions they make may be as a result of poor judgment and it would thus be a shame for a doctor to base their decisions exclusively on their patient’s wishes without realizing that these patients are hardly in a position to make a sound decision. Undoubtedly, I know that pain can be terribly unbearable but unfortunately, patients in such vulnerable situations cannot be relied on to consent to their own deaths since their mental state may be negatively affected by their condition.
Moreover, what can stop an evil doctor or nurse from committing murder under the guise of euthanasia? I recall the story of the doctor and four nurses in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina who were accused of injecting victims with lethal injections under the camouflage of euthanasia. Though not proven guilty, it gives a very good idea of how euthanasia can be misused by unscrupulous practitioners to purposely kill patients on life support.
Having said this, there are instances when the means of providing life support become overstretched especially if a patient has spent many years in a coma. Such a patient becomes a burden to their one’s loved ones who have to use extraordinary means just to keep them on life support. This is especially so if the bill for the life support is being footed by the family members as opposed to the hospital or government.
Very few families can afford to keep a loved one on life support indefinitely and many families often find themselves on the brink of financial destruction when they are maintaining a loved one on life support. In addition, the emotional burden is taxing whereby the family is constantly kept on an emotional rollercoaster, swerving between the hope that their loved one will wake up someday and the despair they feel when it fails to happen.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the issue concerning whether or not to condone the termination of life support is an extremely dicey one. My view is in tandem with that of the Catholic Church- our moral obligation is to support life as long as it is through the use of ordinary means. When we stretch into the use of extraordinary means, it boils down to a person’s choice as to whether or not the life support should be terminated. The bottom line, therefore, is that life should always be supported but only for as long as it does not cause excessive suffering to oneself and others.