Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Who Decides?
Funny how Terri Schiavo keeps coming up. This time it is in the form of a David Freddoso post at The Corner in which he looks at recent scandals involving attempts to harvest organs from patients doctors thought essentially dead that then healed and continued a good life. Freddoso wonders:
Now having been through this just a year ago, of course they never really make the decision, but they pressured us to put my father on the respirator saying it would enable him to heal and then they told us he was not going to heal and we should remove it. My sister is a nurse and I am no science naif, and yet we had little choice but to follow their "advice" there was no way we could acquire the necessary knowledge in the available time to make a truly informed decision with independent analysis. Effectively the doctors decided when my father lived and when he died. THAT IS PLAYING GOD!
When you introduce third party payers, you know insurance companies, and their various regulations, such decisions are often made on purely financial terms. And even if independent means of payments are available, a group of people have decided in such situations that this life in these circumstances is not worth the investment. Indeed, the value of life is measured purely in dollars and cents, something we have not done since chattel slavery. THAT ALSO IS PLAYING GOD!
In raw emotional terms, the Schiavo situation came down to those that were willing to hope and those that were not. It was as simple as that. And it is hope in more than medicine and hope in more than science - it is hope in the Lord.
I am no hope-when-there-is-no-hope type, no, but decisions like this are made on levels beyond science, finance, even law. These are spiritual decisions to be made with much guidance and support.
The system is designed to make it the immediate family's decision, but even they have a responsibility to seek higher authorization. In such decisions, above all others, we must seek the will of God.
Have you?
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This story, written up in BioEdge, raises an important question. Is there some reason why medical professionals should consider themselves qualified to decide when a living human being's life is no longer valuable? Or should they limit themselves to what they actually studied in school — the practice of medicine?We Christians are quick to talk about scientists playing God, but rarely do we talk about medical doctors doing so, and yet in practical terms they do it every day, and far more directly than any scientific experiment or theory. They literally decide life and death.
Now having been through this just a year ago, of course they never really make the decision, but they pressured us to put my father on the respirator saying it would enable him to heal and then they told us he was not going to heal and we should remove it. My sister is a nurse and I am no science naif, and yet we had little choice but to follow their "advice" there was no way we could acquire the necessary knowledge in the available time to make a truly informed decision with independent analysis. Effectively the doctors decided when my father lived and when he died. THAT IS PLAYING GOD!
When you introduce third party payers, you know insurance companies, and their various regulations, such decisions are often made on purely financial terms. And even if independent means of payments are available, a group of people have decided in such situations that this life in these circumstances is not worth the investment. Indeed, the value of life is measured purely in dollars and cents, something we have not done since chattel slavery. THAT ALSO IS PLAYING GOD!
In raw emotional terms, the Schiavo situation came down to those that were willing to hope and those that were not. It was as simple as that. And it is hope in more than medicine and hope in more than science - it is hope in the Lord.
I am no hope-when-there-is-no-hope type, no, but decisions like this are made on levels beyond science, finance, even law. These are spiritual decisions to be made with much guidance and support.
The system is designed to make it the immediate family's decision, but even they have a responsibility to seek higher authorization. In such decisions, above all others, we must seek the will of God.
Have you?
Technorati Tags:life, death, submissions, authority
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