Moral Ethics; The Brophy case

For my statement, I take the case of Paul E. Brophy, who was a firefighter and an emergency medical technician in Easton. He suffered a ruptured brain artery and never regained consciousness after the unsuccessful surgery. He developed pneumonia as well. Mrs. Brophy, his wife, gave the physicians permission for a surgical procedure to insert a feeding tube into his stomach. Later, Mrs. Brophy, a devout Catholic and a nurse who worked part time with the mentally retarded, decided to question the continuation of artificial feeding when her husband’s condition remained unchanged. She consulted with clergy, ethicists and a lawyer before requesting withdrawal of artificial nutrition. In February 1985, Mrs. Brophy asked a probate court for a declaratory judgment ordering the hospital to act affirmatively on her request. A year later, Mr. Brophy was transferred to Emerson hospital under the care of a neurologist who had earlier testified that Brophy was in a persistent vegetative state. Mr. Brophy died eight days after the feeding tube was removed.

When we think about this case, I am sure that we all agree that this case is a complicated dilemma. Personally I do not agree with what Mrs. Brophy did. It is comprehensible that we do not want to see a person whom we love suffer too much. But we have to realize that we do not have the right to decide whether the person has to live or die. Even when the person who is suffering asks us to end his suffering, still we cannot do that. If I were Mrs. Brophy, I would not pull the plug of Mr. Brophy’s feeding tube, even if I know the consequence that he would die by pulling or not the feeding tube. I would rather wait and let him die naturally.

Life is a gift from God, and we need to respect the life of others. Individually, I am not in favor of euthanasia, because obliquely by performing euthanasia, we end the life of others or in an extreme form we kill others. This is not what a human especially as a Catholic is expected to do. What we are expected to do is to respect life, to prepare the terminal patient for death, if we know that the person will live not much longer, but not by performing or supporting euthanasia on this person.