Christian Worldview Concepts

Feeding Tubes and End-of-Life Decision Making

Are Feeding Tubes Appropriate Care?

This brings us to the central issue in the Schiavo case, and for that matter, similar cases. Is a feeding tube appropriate comfort care for those individuals who have significant and permanent brain loss? If a person is in a permanent non-sentient state (i.e., unable to experience or engage the outside world, cannot recognize people, communicate, etc.) do we continue to provide food and fluids to that person?

The ethics of feeding tubes involve more than determining the facts of a particular case, applying a failsafe formula to make an informed decision, acting on that decision and moving on with life. Even if we settle the disputed facts in a given case, actions have a tendency to produce unintended results. Assuming we could have ascertained with absolute certainty Terri Schiavo's condition - that she was indeed in what some call a "persistent vegetative state," that she was not and would never be aware of her existence nor the outside world - knowing these facts would not have settled the issue at all.

The issue was/is not so much a question of is she alive, but what is the meaning of her life? Who could really dispute the claim that Terri Schiavo was alive? Despite the incendiary remarks of her brother-in-law that she "died" back in the 1990s when she collapsed, Schiavo was certainly not a corpse ready to be buried. It is a very lively corpse that can breath on its own, has a beating heart, a steady pulse, full organ functions and metabolizes food and fluids. What undertaker would prepare such a body for burial? One look at the medical facts proves that Terri Schiavo was very much alive. All of the relevant criteria outlined in the Uniform Determination of Death Act (1990) to support the claim that she was dead were not met. She did not meet ANY of those criteria.

In fact, the issue seemed to turn on the claim that she would not want to LIVE in such a state and that her husband, Michael, was simply carrying out her wishes by having the feeding tube removed. Would she or anyone want such a life continued? Would anyone?