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To: SJackson
But there's that time when he was dealing with the brain damaged scientist, who came out with an entire sentence. He knows that we don't know what's going on in brains like this.

But it is sad, and dismal, hard on the families...but I don't think he thinks these lives are worthless.  Unlike the court and Michael Schiavo.

He was also critical of the lack of testing they did on Terri.

I like what he said here: - It also speaks to what is entailed in the professional art of medicine—the art, that is, of identifying, differentiating, curing, rehabilitating, defending, and, in the words of the Hippocratic oath, “benefiting” the sick. Given that doctors and nurses naturally align themselves with life, and are trained to care for whatever life brings, including “life under altered neurological circumstances,” it is only to be expected that they would reject and shrink from actions that aim to kill---

He also doesn't like what is going on with the growth of the culture of death:

---All this has resulted in a steady diminution in the bonds of implicit trust between patients and their doctors and its replacement, in some cases by suspicion or outright hostility, in many other cases by an almost reflexive unwillingness on the part of doctors to impose their own considered, prudential judgments—including their ethical judgments—on the course of treatment.----

This is what he says about the growth of bioethicists:

The monuments to the bioethicists’ principles include Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders, the euphemistically named Living Wills, and the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in the state of Oregon. These are not all the same thing, to be sure, and sophisticated arguments can be advanced for each of them; cumulatively, however, they are signposts of our own culture of death. (emphasis added.)

His conclusion makes it absolutely clear how he feels: The more this culture continues to influence our thinking, the deeper are likely to become the divisions within our society and within our families, the more hardened our hatreds, and the more manifold our fears. More of us will die prematurely; some of us will even be persuaded that we want to.

From the title, to the conclusion, he says life is worth living.  He hates how contemporary thinking has taken away his right as a life-affirming physician to "Do No Harm."  And he thinks it's awful.
57 posted on 06/02/2005 8:19:21 AM PDT by Knitting A Conundrum (Act Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly With God Micah 6:8)
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To: Knitting A Conundrum
He also doesn't like what is going on with the growth of the culture of death:

If you didn't read the thread, you might like THE SLIDE TO AUSCHWITZ written by C. Everett Koop several decades ago.

58 posted on 06/02/2005 8:32:47 AM PDT by SJackson (Israel should know if you push people too hard they will explode in your faces, Abed. palestinian)
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