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"So, are you in favor of medical intervention to save the life of a person who would die without it? After all, maybe it was God’s plan that they should die of that particular condition or disease; and why should man work to change that outcome?"

A good question, SeaHawkFan, and I hope I can give an adequate answer, or at last the beginnings of one.

One angle to get at, is question of, What is the proper end, or goal, of the the medical profession? The proper answer, which might be gathered from Hippocrates or Galen or Aquinas, is that medicine is about restoring health; at any rate, to bring a person back to normal well-being. It is to heal the injury, to restore the lost or weakened function, to cure the illness, to empower well-functioning and remedy non-functioning, to advance life rather than death: because nobody was ever healthier dead.

This marks off the legitimate medical arts from sorcery, from pharmakeia in the malign sense of witch-doctorism or black magic: because sorcery could be employed for well or ill, to cause fertility or stillbirth, to imbue sanity or madness, to support a man's reasoning power or destroy it; to restore or to maim, to advance a true therapeutic recovery or a drugged death.

The techniques of legitimate medicine may be various (diet, rest, exercise, hygiene, drugs, devices, surgery) but the aim is unitary: a sound mind in a sound body, a whole functioning person, complete in every detail.

This is God's will, God being good; so it is not a matter of impiety to practice healing. Jesus healed everywhere he went; so did is Apostles; St. Luke the Evangelist was called by St. Paul "the beloved physician" (Colossians 4:14). No conflict here.

The conflict comes when people start misusing the healing arts and turning them, once again, into a perverted pharmakeia aiming not at health, but at the will, which in a socialist medical regime means the aims of the Powers That Be, and in a capitalist one means those of the highest bidder. Either one, ruled by political power or by financial demand, lacks ethics: it is simply an amoral manipulation of bodies and minds for ends which are not intrinsic to human health.

How I admire Hippocrates!

Sen in this light, killing a paient is always wrong, because --- as I said -- no one is healthier dead.

I rest my case. For now.

OH. One more thing. As for the person with ALS or any other condition which yields a poor prognosis: one always has a right to decide to decline further medical intervention. No one is obliged to submit to endless futile and burdensome interventions,or to be mechanically sustained until they rot off the table. Reusing futile and burdensome treatments in a terminal case is often the wise thing to do: then, rather than focusing on pushing for a cure which is probably impossible, the medical arts can re-focus on keeping the person comfortable, and, most of all, accompanied until natural death.

This means everyone, no matter what the prognosis, should get ordinary care in the form of nutrition and hydration, adequate clothing or covering, cleanliness, pain management, cleanliness, comfort-care, and the encouraging presence of others: companionship to the borders of this life, and the beginning of the next.

I always thought the greatest tenet of the Hippocratic Oath was “to do no harm”.

This woman is making her own choice; she is not being refused treatment by the medical profession. There are many people, especially the elderly with terminal medical conditions who make the very rational decision to end treatment because further treatment would only slightly delay death while imposing enormous pain and suffering.

This might even be more so for Christians who know they are going to heaven.

I am not saying that this woman is making the most Christian or best ethical decision. It’s not an easy case. I may not even agree that she is making the correct decision; just that I am not going to be judgmental in this situation assuming it is being accurately reported.