Terry Schiavo Before Terry Schiavo

Brophy Case Study

The unfortunate case of Paul Brophy should immediately remind people of the very similar case of Terry Schiavo and how that case ended up. Indeed, Mr. Brophy is in a persistent vegetative state due to an artery bursting in his brain. His life can technically be maintained through a feeding tube and other medical equipment but he is not "terminal" in the usually used sense of the word in that he is not near death so long as he is fed. However, his chances of every regaining normal brain function, which he has lost, are zero according to medical professionals. As such, the family wanted to let him go but the medical professionals resisted. While this decision may seem like an easy one to make, it is not remotely easy and for a number of reasons.

Analysis

One important piece of information regarding this case is that happened in 1983 with the legal part of the matter culminating in 1985. As noted in the introduction, the perceived possibility of Brophy regaining consciousness, let alone resuming a normal functioning life, was deemed to be zero. Given this, the family (including the wife of the victim) wanted to end his life as his quality of life was moot. However, a court-appointed attorney as well as the hospital asserted that removing the feeding tube and allowing the patient to die was "ethically" and "morally" wrong as this would be "starving" the patient (Malcom, 1985). Questions like this posed a lot in the field of bioethics (Beachamp & Childress, 2013). However, while some may think that the Christian or other similar faiths would support sustaining and not ending Brophy's life, one perspective on the case was a reverend by the name of John J. Paris. A Jesuit and ethics professor at Holy Cross College, he asserted that it was the sustaining of Brophy's life that was immoral. He likened it to propping up a storm-damaged tree that is not able to survive on its down devices and thus must be allowed to fall. He said that even if the stake propping up the tree is removed, the cause of death was still the wind and not the removal of the stake. Similarly, he held that the burst blood vessel, and not the stake, would be the cause of death in the end (Malcom, 1985).

However, the Chief Physician of the hospital, a man by the name of Richard Field, said that the removal of the feeding tube would be done with the "willful intention of producing this man's death and for no other reason." Field's perspective is not surprising when one reads further in the news story and finds that he was involved in the liberation of Nazi concentration camp Dachau. He asserted that starving someone in any context is inhumane and that the staff of the 200-bed hospital would be "devastated" if the feeding tube removal were removed (Malcom, 1985). The Christian perspective on this subject is surely not monolithic or consistent. Another Christian perspective can be found on the Christian Today website. Published on that website in 2013 and authored by David Baker, he talks about the case of Paul Lamb. Lamb was in a road accident twenty-three years before the authoring of the story. He was actually conscious but was completely paralyzed except for a little movement in his right arm and he stated that he was in persistent and constant pain. As such, he wanted to end his life. Baker asserts that since Lamb "is incapable of playing any part in ending his life, he is seeking deliberate killing by a doctor." Another note is that he, like Brophy, is not "terminally ill" in the strict definition of the term. His life is rife with suffering but he is in not at immediate risk of death. Baker notes that while compassion plays a part in this decision, it is also quite possible that people that would never normally consider suicide would be pressured by relatives because they have become a burden financially and otherwise. An organization by the name of Care Not Kill further held that while several gut-wrenching cases like that of Lamb seem to demand and call for a change to the law to allow for physician-assisted suicides and/or euthanasia, the extreme nature of cases like Lamb alone do not call for such a sweeping change to the law that could include people that are in quite different situations. Examples of people that could become included in such laws would include those with Down's Syndrome, the autistic, the paraplegic, the quadriplegic and so forth. Taken to the extreme, the paradigm could include the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted and so forth. If one is noticing a pattern here, that person would be correct because this is precisely what the Nazi euthanasia program and general eugenics proponents would suggest. Noted scholar on the subject of euthanasia Alex Schadenberg, who wrote the book Exposing Vulnerable People to Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, notes that "the idea that there are lives unworthy to believed is dangerous." He continues by saying "the slippery slope is not imaginary. It exists -- and despite the efforts of euthanasia supporters, it cannot be wished away."