In Fresno County lies a woman, Janet Rivera, in a coma. Not able to eat, she uses a feeding tube for nutrients. Not long ago, some court case somewhere decided that feeding tubes constitute life support. Of course, I disagree.
Either way, the county, her legal guardian, wants this piece of 'life support' removed, and had it removed for a little while. However, Mrs. Rivera lived longer than expected, so they reinstated her feeding tube to get a judge's opinion.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Rivera's family wishes to keep her alive. So, apparently, the county of Fresno can decide over her families wishes to take Mrs. Rivera's life.
The medical ethicist and legal experts interviewed for this article, continue to refer to end of life issues, calling this an end of life issue. However, Mrs. Rivera would not be at the end of her life had the county and these medical and legal folks not stepped in.
A person could live a long time with a feeding tube. Mrs. Rivera is alive. She is breathing on her own and she is not close to death. What is at issue here, is a judgment of her quality of life. The county deems it (her life) a waste.
A waste of what- money?
Her family feels that if she had more money or better health care coverage. While those involved in this situation say that financial considerations play no role in the decision to remove her feeding tube, some bioethicists say,
that regardless of whether money is an issue in Rivera's case, her situation raises a question that's impossible to ignore in the end-of-life debate: how to decide whether it's worth spending limited resources to maintain life support in an apparently hopeless case.
"The stewardship of scarce resources does require us to take resources into account," said Ben Rich, a University of
California at Davis bioethics professor. "But it has to be done
carefully."
from the article
Gotta love that bioethics field. I am currently reading Wesley J. Smith's book, Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America. This is what he has to say in that book about bioethics:
Medical ethics deals with the behavior of doctors in their professional lives vis-a`-vis their patients. Bioethics, as it has developed over the last few decades, focuses on the relationship between medicine, health, and society. This last element allows bioethicists to espouse values higher than the well-being of the individual and to perform the philosophical equivalent of triage.
...bioethics seeks to create a new morality of medicine that will define the meaning of health, determine when life loses its
value, and forge the public policies that will promote a new medical and moral order. More than a set of tenuous speculations, bioethics in recent years has ossified into an ideology.
So, bioethicists work to change our morals, people debate or blog in response, and Mrs. Rivera lies in a coma, her fate in the hands of her county, apparently. Should she be allowed to suffer in this way? Not really our call. She's alive, and we aren't supposed to end a life. We are supposed to care for the person suffering, and for Mrs. Rivera's family.
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