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To: hocndoc
And the surest and fastest way to “kill” Emilio would have been to do what his mother demanded: attempt to place and use a tracheostomy.

I don't recall anyone at the time claiming it would hasten his death. The only concern your side expressed was that it would lengthen his life.

Father Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience, as well as being an unimpeachable pro-life activist and ethicist, and the Council of Bishops of Texas even agreed that it was ethical to turn off the ventilator in the case of Emilio Gonzales.

Don't know him, but I highly doubt that he said it would be permissible to do so against the mother's expressed wishes.

(I probably would not have gone that far, but would have refused to increase the technology or do painful maneuvers to maintain the ventilator.)

Based on what you have written here, I am confident that you would attempt to override his mother's expressed wishes with whatever course of action resulted in the boy's murder as soon as was possible.

Life at all costs is not medicine.

Medicine by definition is the science of prolonging and improving life. Only an incompetent hack wouldn't know this. Your immoral attempt and perverting the real definition betrays your depraved conscience.

115 posted on 08/15/2007 8:55:13 PM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus
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To: Ronaldus Magnus

I’m surprised that you haven’t heard of Father Tad at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. You ought to look him up.

In addition to discussions at the blogs linked to before, the second Ethics Committee report explained why a trach wasn’t appropriate. It was published on line by the North Country Gazette after his mother’s lawyer leaked it to the press. It’s available in a Word Document here: http://www.northcountrygazette.org/documents/PediEthicsCommitteeReport.doc

Medicine cannot always “prolong and improve life.” Father Tad and the 23 active Bishops in Texas agreed that doing what the mother asked, placing a tracheostomy, would have been medically innappropriate.


116 posted on 08/15/2007 11:10:57 PM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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