Posted on 12/07/2005 7:20:30 PM PST by Crackingham
Machines will perform euthanasia on terminally ill patients in Israel under legislation devised not to offend Jewish law, which forbids people taking human life. A special timer will be fitted to a patient's respirator which will sound an alarm 12 hours before turning it off.
Normally, carers would override the alarm and keep the respirator turned on but, if various stringent conditions are met, including the giving of consent by the patient or legal guardian, the alarm would not be overridden. Similar timing devices, known as Sabbath clocks, are used in the homes of orthodox Jews so that light switches and electrical devices can be turned on during the Sabbath without offending religious strictures.
Parliamentarians reached a solution after discussions with a 58-member panel of medical, religious and philosophical experts.
"The point was that it is wrong, under Jewish law, for a person's life to be taken by a person but, for a machine, it is acceptable," a parliamentary spokesman said. "A man would not be able to shorten human life but a machine can."
One would think that given the availability of personal firearms in Israel, euthanasia would be a rather minor problem. What is the statistics on suicides there?
Pro-Life ping
Secular Jews have taken over I guess. Dr Kevorkian on steroids.
Stupidity.
It is not the machine.
It's a human.
This is twisting Jewish tradition in such a way as to deny it.
Foolish, hypocritical casuistry. (look it up)
Setting a timer to do something later is morally the same as doing it at once.
Example: setting a timer to explode later is morally the same as exploding immediately.
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A rather misleading article, as it fails to mention the only issue addressed in the law is the ability terminally ill patient to request the removal of life support.
I may have a problem. Some of my bills are set up to be automatically paid out of my checking account on given days. I don't write out the checks and mail them in. The computers do it all. Does this mean I haven't really paid them?
LOL!
ping....
Who made the machine? Monkeys?
Baptist Ping
This doesn't make any sense. Maybe it's just me?
Setting the machine doesn't do anything until the person setting it has the intent to kill someone.
Firing a gun doesn't do anything until the person firing it has the intent to kill someone.
And I don't get the connection between the Sabbath clock timers and this device. The reason for the clock timers is so a machine can do something forbidden on the Sabbath because of the "no work on the Sabbath" rule...at least that is my understanding.
In this case, it has nothing to do with work, but on removing someone from life support. The lights automatically coming on are the intent of the person when they set the clock on a day it was ok to do it. The removal of life support is the intent of the person setting the clock whenever they did it...12 hours or 12 seconds ahead of time.
Desiring to turn on the lights on the Sabbath isn't the "sin" though...it's the actual act of turning them on. So setting up a clock ahead of time to turn on the lights seems reasonable...
Desiring to turn off someone's life support is the "sin" and having a machine do it now or later is irrelevant.
(PS: These aren't my beliefs, of course...switching on the lights on Saturday is ok by me...this is just my understanding of the the Jewish motivation.)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3180403,00.html
Having read several articles on the same Knesset bill, I don't think this is actually euthanasia at all. True, this account of it is more than a little bit ambiguous. The headline says it's "euthanasia," but one of the other articles said that neither active euthanasia nor the termination of nutrition would be permitted.
But turning off a respirator, or refusing treatment which is burdensome and futile, is not, in itself, euthanasia. Not if the intention is to make the dying patient less encumbered and more comfortable.
It's an intention to deliberately kill which defines euthanasia and makes it morally offensive. Taking a dying person off a ventilator can be done with a sincere intention of making the end more personal, more comfortable, and without an intention of killing them.
This is not so much a Terri Schiavo situation (=murder) as it is a Karen Ann Quinlan situation. In an important case about 25 years ago, Karen Ann Quinlan, despite removal from her ventilator, lived for nine more years, still sustained by tube feeding. When asked if he wanted the feeding tube removed, Karen's father answered, "Oh no, that's her nourishment".
So as far as I can see from the article, this legislation may not involve the intention to kill. In effect, if it means that a dying patient will retain the ability to refuse extraordinary interventions and choose a palliative treatment model, it is morally acceptable.
(We'll find out if I'm wrong if they say, "And if the patient doesn't die, we'll have a gentile nurse come in and smother him with a pillow.")
I would venture to say that the fear of painful, invasive, expensive and useless treatment in one's last weeks of life is what causes some people to say, "Oh, just kill me." This is very wrong. People MUST have both a right to ordinary care at all times (including nutrition and hydration, and effective pain medication) to make them comfortable, and the freedom to decline or end futile chemo, radiation, drugs, surgery, ventilator, and other too-burdensome treatments.
Note that I said there are times when certain treatments could be judged "too burdensome." I didn't say the LIFE could be judged "too burdensome." Nobody has a right to make that judgment. That is strictly God's jurisdiction.
I am completely in agreement that taking someone off of extraordinary life support is different from euthanasia. If someone has no chance of recovery, it is legitimate to take them off a breathing machine, for instance.
But I'm still a little suspicious. Is this because Jewish law is technically stricter for observant Jews than, say, Catholic guidelines? It would seem more sensible, if this is the concern, for a board of rabbis to discuss the matter and agree that withdrawing extraordinary support is not the same thing as depriving someone of life.
Even if the persons in question were unconscious, it seems to me that they should die in the presence of human beings to see them off, not in an empty room with nothing but a machine. What a lonely way to die.
Very well put.
However, realizing that it is more an "end of life support" bill, I don't see the logic of the timer or the correlation with the Sabbath clock timers. They're claiming that it prevents a human from having to take another human's life, when in fact it *is* a human who is setting up a machine to automatically shut off the life support. If the person is brain-dead...they won't be able to do it for themselves, so someone else is going to have to.
I guess I just don't see how the timer makes a difference. You can turn off the life support now or program a machine to do it later...the end is the same. It's not a "work" issue like with the Sabbath clock timers. You aren't restricted by timing. When do you loose responsibility? After 12 hours? After 12 seconds? Doesn't make any sense!
I understand the timing issue with the Sabbath clock timers, but not the timing issue with this. I keep thinking I'm missing something! Like any minute it will dawn on me and I'll say "Ohhh!" :-)
"Passive Euthanasia" is a popular term in secular bioethics for refusing extraordinary means. I do suspect it's a rhetorical strategy eventually to be used to justify "active" euthanasia, which is euthanasia in the generally understood sense: an action or omission with the intention of killing somebody.
And as for secular bioethics: if you're ever flat on your back in a hospital bed and a large, amiably-concerned, bespectacled face looms over you and you catch the word "bioethicist," for God's sake keep your eyes on him and KEEP TALKING while you reach for your gun.
This is totally wrong,
no matter how they spin it.
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