Practical Ethics by Singer

Author:Singer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781139039147
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011-03-01T08:00:00+00:00

In the preceding section, we discussed justifiable killing of beings who have never been capable of choosing to live or die. Ending a life without consent may also be considered in the case of those who were once persons capable of choosing to live or die but now, through accident or old age, have permanently lost this capacity and did not, prior to losing it, express any views about whether they wished to go on living in such circumstances. These cases are not rare. Many hospitals care for motor accident victims whose brains have been damaged beyond all possible recovery. They may survive, in a coma or perhaps barely conscious, for many years. Rita Greene, a nurse, was twenty-four when she became ill and went into a persistent vegetative state. She died at the age of sixty-three without ever having recovered consciousness. Estimates of the number of people in a persistent vegetative state in the United States at any given time range from 10,000 to 40,000. In other developed countries, where life-prolonging technology is not used so aggressively, there are far fewer long-term patients in this condition.

Decisions about the treatment of people in a persistent vegetative state sometimes come before the courts and receive extensive publicity. None has received more attention than the case of Terri Schiavo, who died in a Florida hospice in 2005 after spending fifteen years in what her doctors said was a persistent vegetative state. Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, wanted her feeding tube removed so that she would die. He claimed that this was in accordance with her wishes, as previously expressed to him. Robert and Mary Schindler, her parents, denied this and also claimed that she showed signs of awareness and so was not in a persistent vegetative state. Court decisions favoured Michael Schiavo, and the feeding tube that was keeping Terri Schiavo alive was withdrawn. The case was soon taken up as a cause by those opposed to abortion and euthanasia. They succeeded in persuading the Florida legislature to pass a new law to keep Terri's case before the Florida courts, and when the courts again failed to order that Terri be kept alive, Congress was recalled from a break to pass a special law allowing the Schindlers to take their case to a federal court. President George W. Bush flew from his Texas ranch to Washington to sign the law, but the federal court also held that Michael Schiavo had the right to make the decision to withdraw his wife's feeding tube. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from that decision, and Terri died. An autopsy showed that Terri Schiavo's brain was severely atrophied, and that no treatment could have reversed the loss of brain matter.

It is possible that a small percentage of patients diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state do have some awareness. Improved imaging techniques enable us to see, however, that for many patients in a persistent vegetative state, there is no blood flow to the parts of the brain responsible for consciousness.

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