The case concerns a small child afflicted with a terminal disease. The doctors were suing for the right to discontinue treatment and withdraw life support because they believed the child is subject to "intolerable suffering." The father, a Muslim, believes that the right to take a life belongs to God, not humankind, and the mother contends that, in any case, the child's life is not without its compensatory pleasures. The court, for the moment, has sided with the parents. But the case, whichever way it ultimately falls out, will further reinforce a legal precedent that is dangerous, misguided and patently immoral.
The crux of the issue is the impossibility of adequately defining life's quality. In an age when the requirements of the simple business contract can be argued in court for decades, the very idea that a satisfactory legal definition for what constitutes "quality of life" could ever be forged is absurd. The medical ethicist in this case admits as much when he says (italics mine):
Intolerable suffering is not an objective criterion. Suffering, like pleasure, is a purely subjective experience and there exists no scientific instrument that shows exactly how much an individual is suffering.In that case, how is it, then, that we continue to pursue such a definition? In his very next sentence, the ethicist finds what he thinks is a partial answer, noting that the only way to know for sure whether a person's suffering is "intolerable" is to ask him/her, which, in the current case, is not possible.
The problem with that, of course, is that I have experienced what I judged (at the time) to be intolerable suffering. And I know many others who have as well. By this man's definition, people afflicted with chronic depression, for example, could tell us at a point of pain, that we need to help him/her end that painful life, and we'd be bound to do it. (That, of course, is the position of the so-called "Right to Die" lobby.) But of course, the world is full of people who are glad that they didn't drive off that cliff, take those pills, pull the trigger or otherwise initiate the end of their own life but instead were prevented form doing so by caring family and/or friends or, on their own, grasped hold of their will to live and let it pull them out of intolerable suffering.
We are no better judges of what's best for us when we're in pain than anyone else would be. And this line of argument has no bearing anyway on the rights of those, both born and unborn, who cannot yet express themselves.
"Quality of life" is inherently one of the slipperiest of ethical slippery slopes, and one down which a society increasingly divorced from God or absolutes of any kind is doomed to go. The medical ethicist in this article, in fact, recognizes the vast, uncrossable gulf between the doctor/scientist, who only deals with what he can see and the parent, particularly the religious parent, who taps into what cannot be seen. He even admits that no one can fault the parents in question:
For the parents, these pleasures are sufficient to constitute a worthwhile life. Based on these beliefs, their decision to fight for their son's ongoing treatment is understandable. Indeed, we would be deeply concerned if anyone with these beliefs willingly allowed their child to die.
Indeed. But then he goes on to make this astonishing statement:
Although commentators have expressed much sympathy for the parents, they have generally overlooked the moral challenges for the medical team. In the doctor's eyes, by continuing to treat Baby MB with painful and futile measures, they are treating a vulnerable child against his best interests and violating a basic tenet of medical practice: first, do no harm Ironically, in these spacial circumstances, it is keeping the child alive that constitutes the harm.
Really!??! Since the greatest harm they could do (particularly from the point of view of the scientist who holds no belief in an afterlife) is to end its existence, it is arguably the lesser evil to treat him. Sorry, that seems to me to be pretty simple. In fact, it is foundational to every legal system that those who end the life of an innocent, and the act was premeditated, have committed murder. But our ethicist persists:
The child's neurologist, Dr S, said: "I have been feeling that what I have been doing as a doctor has been wrong for many months, which is a very difficult position for me to be in." The wrongness lies not only in acting against his conscience (which is distressing enough), but in being complicit in a child's profound and avoidable suffering. It is no surprise that some of the doctors have expressed a reluctance to carry on treating Baby MB if the ruling goes against them — which it now has.
Well, there you have it: This is a case of the medical community "feeling" like its in a "difficult" position and therefore, insisting on its right to relief from its own suffering. And, he suggests, the doctors are not sure they're willing to comply with the court's judgment, despite the fact that the court has ruled against them in accordance with the "quality of life" criteria they claim to live by.
If today's medical ethicists have their way, the world will eventually be robbed of the greatness, even the genius, that is wrought, in part, by people who fight intolerable suffering and handicap and survive to contribute much to the world's more fortunate and less pain stricken. What would the world be without a Steven Hawking? Or, to turn it around, a Mother Theresa, who believed that loving and comforting and valuing those in pain made more sense than to kill them. Who in fact, gave up what could have been a nice life like yours or mine to devote herself to those in intolerable pain?
The answer is, it would be a world in which the weakest, smallest and most vulnerable would be done away with by the powerful who, as a consequence of their own weakness, smallness and vulnerability, would presume to deteremine another's ultimate value.
Hasn't the world had enough of that already?
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