Originally posted by Rude
In this country, we unplug machines at the behest of family, allowing nature to take it's course....that's a big difference from a Kavorkian styled injection which kills the patient.
Different how? The result is the same, the patient dies.
Consider this:
A mother decides she no longer wants her 6-week-old baby. So she stops feeding it. Unable to feed his self, the infant soon dies. Is this murder?
Dang right it is. Her actions directly led to the death of the baby.
Now … consider a terminally ill patient, unable to move, eat or drink. The family refuses any further treatment, including feeding and hydration. So we pull out the tubes and the patient dies within a week from dehydration.
Why is this “letting nature take it’s course” while the first example isn’t?
The only difference is semantics and how we feel. By letting a terminally ill patient die from dehydration, we can pass the buck. We can nod our head solemnly and say “it’s in God’s (or mother nature’s) hands now.” Of course the reality is that our action will directly cause the patient’s death just as sure as if we had administered an overdose of anesthetic.
If a person with a terminally ill dog let the dog die from dehydration and malnutrition, they could be charged with animal cruelty. Where’s the moral outrage when we do this to people?
