Over the Objections of the Italian Courts and the Vatican, Poet Declines Medical Care and Dies

Ronald Bailey | December 21, 2006

Italian poet Piergiorgio Welby, who has been suffering from muscular dystrophy for nearly 40 years, was taken off his respirator today in defiance of Italian court rulings and the Vatican. Welby, who had been attached to a respirator for 9 years, asked the Italian court to let doctors disconnect him (since, after all, he could no longer move). The court ruled that this would be euthanasia and doctors who participate in it could be sent to prison for up to 15 years.

The Vatican opposed disconnecting Welby because doing so might constitute euthanasia. But as the New York Times points out:

The church also opposes medical treatments to artificially prolong life, but several church officials have worried recently that ending artificial life support could result in de facto euthanasia.

“The problem is to know if we find ourselves truly in front of a case of an artificial prolonging of life,” Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, the Vatican’s top official for health, said in a recent interview with La Repubblica.

I find this cruelty in the name of religious dogma infuriating. If being kept alive by means of a feeding tube and a respirator is not artificial, what is? A point that Welby himself powerfully made:

“What is natural about a hole in the belly and a pump that fills it with fats and proteins?” he wrote in his letter to the president [of Italy]. The letter was delivered with a video of Mr. Welby in his bed at his home in Rome attached in silence to the respirator, with a laptop at his bedside reading his words in a spooky synthesized voice.

“What is natural about a hole in the windpipe and a pump that blows air into the lungs?” he wrote. “What is natural about a body kept biologically functional with the help of artificial respirators, artificial feed, artificial hydration, artificial intestinal emptying, of death artificially postponed?”

Well said!

The beginning and end of life are where differences in religious beliefs become acute. Toleration of these differences is what makes living peaceably together in civil society possible.

As I've written before, I am personally conflicted about state sanctioned physician assisted suicide because I fear that the state may one day begin mandating that people be helped off this mortal coil. Increasingly advances in medicine force patients, families and physicians to make end-of-life decisions that nature once made for them. There is no perfect formula for making those decisions, but it is best that they be made informally by patients, families and physicians. The fact that the state can prosecute after the fact should deter most abuses. Again, not perfect, but the best that fallible humans can do.

Rest in peace Piergiorgio Welby.

Comments

|12.21.06 @ 11:22AM|#

Dying is a natural stage - the last, in fact - through which all living things must pass.

|12.21.06 @ 12:04PM|#

" "The problem is to know if we find ourselves truly in front of a case of an artificial prolonging of life," Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, the Vatican's top official for health, said in a recent interview with La Repubblica. "

They didn't seem to have much of a problem making a judgement in the case of Pope "N minus 1." That is, they let him croak peacefully in his bed and handed off the funny hat to a new guy. Why didn't they just cart him around in the Popemobile with tubes and wires and ducts hanging out of him? Death With Dignity, once again, is in the eye of the beholder.

|12.21.06 @ 12:21PM|#

The beginning and end of life are where differences in religious beliefs become acute. Toleration of these differences is what makes living peaceably together in civil society possible.

That sounds all well and good, but in practice it means that the most restrictive definition of the beginning of life will be the only one enforced. If we were to accept the views of philosophers like Peter Singer, for instance, as worthy of toleration, that would mean legalizing infanticide, perhaps all the way up to the age of reason.

I'm all for tolerance of different viewpoints when those viewpoints don't involve harming other persons. But when there's a question as to whether a practice is killing people, you can't just brush those concerns off by invoking tolerance.

|12.21.06 @ 12:41PM|#

crimethink: I didn't say it would be easy. As you know, decisions regarding extremely premature births are left largely in the private sphere so far. Also parents generally have the right to decide what to do about maintaining life support for severely impaired infants. That's the kind of toleration I'm talking about. Again, not perfection, but the best we can do.

|12.21.06 @ 1:02PM|#

Ron Bailey,

You've invoked the same principle in reference to the abortion debate; you do support the legal right to destroy healthy embryos and fetuses, no?

|12.21.06 @ 1:18PM|#

crimethink: Yes, because embryos and at least early fetuses are not people and therefore have no rights. But we've been over this ground before. We can continue to try to persuade one another civilly or as one my favorite bioethicists (who is big time believing Orthodox Christian) Tristram Engelhardt would say, "reach for our revolvers" to settle the matter. I suggest tolerance as we continue the conversation.

|12.21.06 @ 1:19PM|#

crimethink; Surely you are not suggesting that premature and severely impaired infants are not people?

Warren|12.21.06 @ 2:30PM|#

If we were to accept the views of philosophers like Peter Singer, for instance, as worthy of toleration, that would mean legalizing infanticide, perhaps all the way up to the age of reason.

Pete is too much of a pantywaste for me. Infanticide should be legal up until the little bastard gets a job and starts making a financial contribution to the household.