The New York Times has offered us a long, detailed and fair article about an important question for psychiatry. It’s author, Katie Engelhart has done an excellent job of framing the issues, in all of their maddening complexity. Should physicians allow anorexic patients to die? Should they stop all treatments and merely provide hospice care, to make them comfortable while they starve themselves to death?
Very sad, but indidputable that a person intent upon killing herself will do it despite the interventions of others. Of course, the key is figuring out whether said person is serious or actually seeking attention or even help for some underlying issue. Ay, there's the rub. Of course, extrapolating from the position that a doctor should be involved along the way to assist in death rather than seek to prevent it is contrary to the Hippocratic Oath (but does anyone even take that any more? or take it seriously, anyway?), since we are all inevitably destined to die, should doctors even administer care? Or should they merely stand by with narcotics, hallucenogenics or anesthetic medications while we, their "patients" slide into oblivion? Once the Divine origin of man is eliminated and we are all transformed into nothing more than meaty robots, there is no reason to prolong life. We have already decided as a society that it is acceptable to kill babies in the womb as well as elderly people who are merely "useless eaters," there are no limits to the depravity that will be condoned.
Very sad, but indidputable that a person intent upon killing herself will do it despite the interventions of others. Of course, the key is figuring out whether said person is serious or actually seeking attention or even help for some underlying issue. Ay, there's the rub. Of course, extrapolating from the position that a doctor should be involved along the way to assist in death rather than seek to prevent it is contrary to the Hippocratic Oath (but does anyone even take that any more? or take it seriously, anyway?), since we are all inevitably destined to die, should doctors even administer care? Or should they merely stand by with narcotics, hallucenogenics or anesthetic medications while we, their "patients" slide into oblivion? Once the Divine origin of man is eliminated and we are all transformed into nothing more than meaty robots, there is no reason to prolong life. We have already decided as a society that it is acceptable to kill babies in the womb as well as elderly people who are merely "useless eaters," there are no limits to the depravity that will be condoned.