Vatican opposes removal of feeding tubes

[JediMaster12]

I personally wouldn't want to be kept alive with a machine breathing for me. While I am a pro life type person, I do draw the line at some point. In my mind if there little to no hope of recovery from a vegetative state, then I would pull the plug. Then again it is easy for me to say that now since I have never gone through the anguish of that. I just think that there are more important things to worry about than splitting hairs over this.

[SilentScope001]

so the person in question would be unable to speak, write, type, or heck, cut and paste, or even nod at the right words. And a person would want to live in this state?

 

Yes. I think I would choose to be in a PVS state forever rather than die.

 

Don't ask why. I just feel that I may choose that way rather than let myself die.

[Web Rider]

Yes. I think I would choose to be in a PVS state forever rather than die.

 

Don't ask why. I just feel that I may choose that way rather than let myself die.

 

I wouldn't, but yes some might. Though extremely sad and disturbing, watching someone die is amazing as they struggle and fight to hang on till their last breathe. I’ve only watched three people (my father, an uncle and ironically a priest invoiced in a car-train accident) and no matter how bad their condition they all struggled for life.

 

Anyone with medical knowledge know if the organs suffer in someone in vegetative state? I’m wondering if it would affect the viability of organ donation in the future.

 

 

exactly, and that's where we differ. I simply proposed people make living wills saying what they wish to be done to them, update them if you are able and you're mind changes. I personally simply wouldn't want to live like that, since IMO, it's not really living.

[SykoRevan]

I'm completely pro-choice, as long as the choice is made by someone actually affected by the situation. Now, I'm no fan of the Catholic Church, and every time they announce that they have "decided" that something is wrong or immoral, I dislike them even more. I wonder how many members of the Vatican have had a loved one in a vegetative state, but even that doesn't matter, since they are trying to tell other people, mostly people they have never met, seen, heard from, or knew of, what they should do. Subjects such as feeding tubes or abortions (another thing the Catholics say is wrong) are highly personal, and I would never accept the word of a stranger who I have never met who is telling me that I shouldn't do something because THEY say it is immoral, I don't care if it's Pope Benedict himself. Only a person's loved ones has the right to be a part of the debate, because these things are not only personal, they are highly circumstantial, and every case is exceptional. There is no "run-of-the-mill" case in the situation of someone being hooked up to a machine that keeps them alive, and everything the family and/or loved ones say or do is a factor, but to close my statement, the Vatican should never be one of those factors.

[Jae Onasi]

Anyone with medical knowledge know if the organs suffer in someone in vegetative state? I’m wondering if it would affect the viability of organ donation in the future.

 

It would depend on what was causing the vegetative state and what causes death. If there's a degenerative disease, it often affects multiple organs and renders them unusable. If the PVS is cause by a cancerous tumor, there would be a risk of metastases, so you wouldn't want to give someone an organ that might harbor cancer. Someone who's suffered a traumatic brain injury, say from an accident, would be more likely to be an eligible donor.

 

If the person in PVS dies from something like a stroke or blood clot, then the organs might be usable. A lot of time, however, they die from major infections that cause multiple organ failure. Not only are the organs irreparably damaged, but they're usually infected as well, and you wouldn't want to put an infected organ into someone else (since the recipient is put on immune-suppressing drugs besides the obvious 'yukk').

 

The exception might be corneas. Since there's no blood supply to the cornea (it gets its nutrients and oxygen from the tears), it's possible to harvest those when other organs might not be usable.

 

I thought about the possibility of donating my grandma's corneas, but she lost her ability to blink when she went into a coma, and the staff never thought to put some rewetting gel in her eyes, so her eyes got damaged. I was really ticked off because I know just how bad that must have hurt, too.

 

@SykoRevan--since priests oftentimes give Last Rites, I suspect they see death on a very regular basis. They usually have family, too. The Catholic church has been (at least in the last 50 years, if not more) consistently pro-life on issues like abortion and capital punishment. I suspect they're just clarifying the church position so people know where they stand and to use it as part of their guidance in making end-of-life decisions.

[mimartin]

Thanks for the information Jae. You killed to birds with one stone. You gave me the information I was seeking and in doing that you’ve explained why as an organ donor myself I can only give corneas and skin. Something I never understood till now. I had a blood transfusion as a child and was told by my doctor when I became a donor that I could not give anything beyond skin and eyes. Now I know that is because the corneas are not affected by blood.

 

Under traumatic brain injury, if I understand correctly, the organs may still be viable in the future? Keeping people on feeding tubes will not affect the use of donor organs just the timing.

[SykoRevan]

@SykoRevan--since priests oftentimes give Last Rites, I suspect they see death on a very regular basis. They usually have family, too. The Catholic church has been (at least in the last 50 years, if not more) consistently pro-life on issues like abortion and capital punishment. I suspect they're just clarifying the church position so people know where they stand and to use it as part of their guidance in making end-of-life decisions.

 

I'm not saying they're not entitled to their opinion, but some people seem to think that once the Vatican condemns something, then it should become illegal, and the Vatican doesn't really do anything to change that certain perception. As long as they don't do things like picket abortion clinics or hospitals where someone in a vegetative state is being treated. However, some Catholics have been known to do that. I'm not saying that the Vatican is responsible for the picketers, but most of them are only following the word of the Vatican because... well, it's the Vatican. Like I said, some people think the Vatican can think no wrong, and that they know best in all situation, regardless of circumstance. They sometimes fail to sit and think about how the family and loved ones are feeling.

 

One example is a local case in my hometown that thankfully didn't receive public attention like Terri Schiavo. The man had a stroke, and his brain damage was high enough so that he was pronounced to be in a vegetative state. After about a month, they declared it persistent, and the family didn't go one day without visiting the hospital where their father was being treated on a gastric feeding tube. Incidentally, I met one guy who was being fed through one because he had esophageal atresia, and he said having it in was a mix between a tingle and an open wound, so I personally would never want a feeding tube in me. Anyway, soon the local Catholics started to get involved, and after talking to the wife of the victim (I was in the same hospital), I found out they had followed her home and tried to convince her to keep the tube in. However, after going to their house one day to help them fend off the Catholics, I found a document the man wrote before his stroke while helping them clear out his home office that stated that if he were ever to be in a situation where he was only kept alive through machines, that he did not want to live that way. After hearing that the feeding tube was coming out, the Catholics actually started mailing harsh letters to the family. Of course, my general dislike of those certain Catholics prompted me to go to their church with a bag full of ashes labeled "Catholic Hate Mail" as well as a letter the family wrote with my help, stating our opinion that they were not only sticking their noses in someone else's business (A point I made in my last post) but were also disrespecting the very wishes of the man they were trying to keep alive, someone they had never met, and they never even went to his bedside the entire time he was in the hospital, unlike his family. After that, they didn't go anywhere near the man or his family, although since they already knew me very well, I was now considered by some of that congregation to be "the biggest Anti-Catholic in the city," which I was slightly proud of. However, after meeting the priest that ran the church, I asked him why his congregation had so fervently tried to keep a stranger on life support. He told me it was because of the Vatican's pro-life stance on the subject after the Terri Schiavo case. When I asked him if that was the only reason why he believed in it, he actually didn't have an answer, but he thanked me for supposedly "enlightening him."

 

I guess my point is, some people will look to the beliefs of the Vatican as Divine Mandate, and ignore the personal aspects of the situation, which says to me that maybe the members of the Vatican Council would do better to keep out of such subjects in the future, and focus on things that affect the Catholic Church as a whole.