By BRIAN CLOWES
(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For an electronic copy of chapter 23 of The Facts of Life, “Euthanasia,” e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)
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“You are a member of the first generation of doctors in the history of medicine to turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind — and to do so without a single murmur from the august New England Journal of Medicine. And do you know what you’re going to end up doing? You, a graduate of Harvard and a reader of The New York Times and a member of the Ford Foundation’s Program for the Third World? Do you know what is going to happen to you? You’re going to end up killing Jews” — Walker Percy, in his novel The Thanatos Syndrome (1987).
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The Ultimate Questions. It is one thing to speak of the sanctity of life and of human life being created in the image and likeness of God — but what does the anti-euthanasia activist say when he is confronted by a pro-euthanasia person who does not believe in God — or who believes in a permissive, feel good “god” who allows him to do anything he wants?
Anti-euthanasia activists must be able to speak in terms of the negative consequences that assisted suicide and euthanasia have on society at large, and they must be able to explain these ideas in very specific and relevant terms if they hope to make an impression on secularists.
When people speak of the philosophical aspects of euthanasia, they inevitably return again and again to the central focus of the issue. They will invariably be forced to consider the two ultimate questions regarding euthanasia.
These are: Why is euthanasia right (or wrong)? and: Should we not be able to determine the ultimate disposition of our own bodies?
First Reason: Euthanasia is forever. It is curious that most pro-euthanasia activists are opposed to capital punishment, primarily because mistakes can be made (and have been made) when administering the death penalty. In other words, once a person has been executed, not even the most conclusive proof of his innocence can bring him back to life.
We may use precisely the same reasoning to oppose euthanasia. There are literally hundreds of cases on record where doctors have judged people to be “irreversibly comatose,” and then the patients have awakened to lead perfectly normal lives. In fact, it is safe to say that there are many more people who have awakened from “irreversible” comas than there are innocent people who have been executed in this country.
It is very revealing that pro-euthanasia activists always promise to erect “safeguards” to protect those who desire to die, and then immediately discard or ignore them.
The “right to die” is not a right — it is the taking away of all possible rights.
Dead men don’t choose.
A few cases where euthanasia was considered but rendered moot when the patient in question recovered are outlined below.
Teisa Franklin. This little 21-month-old girl ingested a huge quantity of anti-depressant drugs on February 4, 1988, and lapsed into a deep coma. After an initial examination, doctors at Mercy Hospital pronounced her clinically brain dead and stated that she would be a good candidate for organ donation. However, only 18 hours after slipping into the coma, she began to recover, and, only one week after the near fatal incident, she was released from the hospital. A pediatric nurse at the hospital said that “we never would have guessed it would turn out like this.”
This case demonstrates precisely why the euthanasia of comatose persons is such a dangerous practice.
Jacqueline Cole. Mrs. Cole awoke on May 15, 1986, 47 days after lapsing into a deep coma induced by a stroke, when a friend came to pay his last respects. Doctors had said her chances of recovery were “one in a million.” Her husband, a Presbyterian minister, had gone to court just six days before to have her disconnected from her life support systems. Fortunately for her, Baltimore Circuit Judge John Byrnes refused his request.
Carrie Coons. Carrie A. Coons, 86, of Rensselaer, N.Y., was declared to be in an “absolutely irreversible vegetative state” by her doctors after she suffered a stroke and cerebral hemorrhage in November of 1988. For nearly five months, she neither spoke nor showed any signs of alertness. Her 88-year-old sister and various doctors and lawyers petitioned the State Supreme Court to allow the removal of her feeding tube. Her doctor, Michael Wolff, a nationally recognized expert in geriatric medicine, declared that she was in a “hopeless” state with “absolutely no chance of recovery.”
Coons was the first New York citizen whose petition to die was granted by the State Supreme Court. However, just two days after the court granted the petition, she woke up and began to eat and speak. Judge Joseph Harris dismissed the right to die writ when he heard that Coons had recovered.
Neurologist Ronald Cranford of Minneapolis, a White House Commission adviser on right to die issues, stated: “It’s a dramatic case. It shows you that you’re basically never dealing with certainties here.” Once again, this case demonstrates why both direct and passive euthanasia should be absolutely banned.
Harold Cybulski. The doctors were all set: 79 year old grandfather Harold Cybulski of Barry’s Bay, Ont ario, had been pronounced “brain dead and comatose,” and the experts who pronounced him so stood by to disconnect his life-support systems just as soon as his family had said their last goodbyes. Then his two-year-old grandson ran into the room and yelled “Grandpa!” and Cybulski sat up and picked the little boy up!
Six months later, he was leading a completely normal life, even driving the new car he had been looking forward to buying before he became comatose. Cybulski’s doctors had “no explanation” for his instant recovery.
Living Organ Donors. There have been a number of cases in which surgeons have been preparing to remove the organs from “profoundly comatose” persons, only to have them wake up on the operating table.
Just as a surgeon was preparing to remove his kidneys and eyes, S.W. Winogrond winked. He eventually recovered.
Just as a doctor began to make an incision to remove his liver, a “brain dead” man’s foot twitched. He soon awoke from his coma.
In North Carolina, an identical scenario unfolded as doctors prepared to remove a 22-year-old man’s organs.
In another case, doctors told the mother of a 14-year-old girl that she was “essentially brain dead,” and asked them to donate her organs. Two months later she had completely recovered and was living a normal life.
Even a man who was declared dead after a traffic accident and spent two days lying in a metal box in a mortuary recovered consciousness, yelled for help, and was rescued.
In every one of these cases — and in hundreds of other cases that are reported or unreported every year — people are condemned to death people because doctors are “absolutely certain” will never recover. But no amount of anecdotal evidence answers the question: How many people actually recover from a deep comatose state?
Medical researchers have performed a number of extensive studies to determine how many people in so-called “irreversible comas” actually recover.
One study of 84 people with a “firm diagnosis” of PVS showed that 41 percent had regained consciousness within six months, 52 percent by one year, and 58 percent within three years. A second study of 26 children in comas lasting more than 12 weeks found that three-fourths eventually regained consciousness. Another study found that one-third of the 370 patients in a “PVS” for up to one year recovered enough to return to work.
Totaling the numbers from these three studies, we see that 192 of 480 PVS patients — or 40 percent — eventually recovered.
It is obvious that, when predicting the futures of patients who are deemed to be in so-called “persistent vegetative states,” there is no such thing as a “sure thing.” It is also obvious that the main motives of many health professionals are the saving of medical resources and cost control, not the saving or betterment of human life.
As we have noted, it is a curious fact that most pro-euthanasia activists oppose capital punishment, primarily because judges and juries make mistakes during trials that can result in an unjust sentence of death.
Those who support euthanasia are therefore willing to spend an average of $1.15 million to keep a hardened killer behind bars for the rest of his natural life — and hundreds of thousands more on multiple legal appeals to make absolutely certain that every person executed by the state is truly guilty as charged. But they do not seem willing to spend a much smaller amount to keep an innocent comatose or ill person alive in the very real hope that he will recover or at least live for an extended period of time.
We must wonder about the level of outrage pro-euthanasia activists would undoubtedly show if it could be proven that 40 percent of those executed were innocent — which is the same percentage of “irreversibly comatose” people who eventually recover.
Pro-life activists may use precisely the same reasoning to oppose euthanasia. As we have seen, medical people have judged hundreds of people “irreversibly comatose,” only to find that these people awaken and lead normal or nearly normal lives.
Capital punishment is forever.
And so is euthanasia.
So, in order to be consistent, those who oppose capital punishment must also oppose euthanasia.
(To be continued.)
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