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To: Alberta's Child
A third party has now been introduced into your "decision to die":

Actually it hasn't, it's been there all along since she was first diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and brought doctors into the equation.

Could one not make the argument that her desire to seek treatment for an untreatable condition was a violation of God's will to return her to heaven..........?

Would God also condemn her to hell if she had chosen NOT to seek treatment for any temporary life prolonging treatments?

120 posted on 10/07/2014 1:42:56 PM PDT by Hot Tabasco (Don't harsh my buzz homie......)
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To: Hot Tabasco
There's a huge difference between going to a hospital for medical treatment and using medical personnel to end your life. Killing yourself is not "medical treatment" no matter how you look at it.

I have no problem with someone resigning themselves to a medical condition and allowing nature to run its course. Killing yourself is not the same thing. A review of the interesting Karen Quinlan case might offer some good insight here. In Quinlan's case, her parents had sought legal permission and religious advice (from the Catholic Church) on the difficult question of removing their comatose daughter from a respirator. Their legal and moral grounds were solid, in that they made a compelling case that Karen's condition was persistent, irreversible, and offered no optimistic prognosis.

They received approval on both counts, but it became moot when the hospital turned off the respirator and the comatose woman survived for years without it.

Whenever I read stories like this I always think of the business associate of mine with a congenital cardio-respiratory condition who was given 2-3 years to live. That was 12 years ago and counting. He's now about 40 years old ... and while the odds are against him living to the ripe old age of 80, I'd say that the advances in medical research for his condition over the last ten years give him a pretty good shot at collecting Social Security for a few years.

Einstein is quoted as once saying that "God does not play dice with the universe." There is a lot of wisdom in that. And it's probably not wise to let people play dice with things of metaphysical value, either.

125 posted on 10/07/2014 3:19:12 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin' on here?")
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