Cicely Saunders and Hospice Movement

Living Fully Until We Die
Dame Cicely Saunders' Christian faith and love for terminally ill patients led her to found the modern hospice movement.
Sarah E. Johnson

Today, hospice is an accepted part of American medicine. One out of three terminally ill Americans uses hospice care. People increasingly assume that hospice is part of the dying process. They also assume a key hospice principle: that people should be cared for in such a way that they can live fully until they die. Few realize that the modern hospice movement is young and that Christian faith motivated its founder.

Finish this article from ChristianHistory.net.

Report of Euthanasia Talk on The Christian Post

Ministry Leader Speaks of Euthanasia, Actually

Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009 Posted: 3:50:00PM HKT

The three panel speakers at GCF's Euthanasia Forum held yesterday: Dr Alastair Campbell, Dr Alex Tang, and Rev Dr Tan Soo Inn. (Photo: CPS)

For the three panel experts at a Christian Euthanasia forum conducted yesterday, there was no question about whether the community of believers should oppose its legalisation - it was more an issue of definition and scope.

One of them felt that in the midst of extensive debate euthanasia had lost its original meaning of a 'good death'.

Coming against conventional understandings of euthanasia as refusing treatment, an opportunity to get rid of old folks, the Advanced Medical Directive, or doctors as killers – he added that doctors have a license only to save – Dr Alex Tang, the Director of the Spiritual Formation Institute, Malaysia, and a paediatrician at the Johor Specialist Hospital, redefined it in the light of what Scripture approves.

Citing the figure of Jacob as the example of someone who had died a good death, Tang pointed out three characteristics.

“Jacob accepted his death at the appointed time,” he said, framing physical death as one of the realities of life on earth.

Secondly, the patriarch was able to place his life in the context of the ongoing history of God’s salvation. Finally, he perceived earthly death as the point of entry into another life to fulfill God’s purpose.

Emphasising that Christians should not cling on to life, Tang used the model of Jesus Christ, who gave up His life as a redemptive act, and who also died as an act of surrender.

“Euthanasia for Christians is to live well and to die well at the appointed time,” he said.

The forum, entitled Euthanasia: A Christian Perspective, was organised by the Graduates’ Christian Fellowship (GCF), an inter-denominational ministry consisting of professional groups including doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, scientists, counselors, and marketplace professionals to help Christians see and reach their workplaces as mission fields, and also provide a biblical voice via such forums.

For yesterday’s talk, which received a room packed with attendants from various Christian circles, GCF also invited Prof Alastair Campbell, Director of Centre for Biomedical Ethics at National University Singapore, and Rev Dr Tan Soo Inn, Chairman and Training Consultant of Graceworks, and chaplain of the Christian Medical and Dental Fellowship (CMDF), a sectional group of the fellowship.

Rev Tan, who was formerly the senior pastor of a large church in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, broadened the debate by bringing in the importance of hospice and palliative care for terminal patients. In addressing his topic, he revisited the painful personal experience of caring for a loved one – his wife – who suffered from cancer in the early 1990s and went to be with the Lord some time later.

Tan expressed his concern that Christians could tend to emphasise theological position to the extent that they neglect the day-to-day practical life issues of the care of a suffering, terminal patient who is beyond healing and recovery.

Recalling his own struggles during his wife’s ailment – his wife felt she failed her children, while he felt his world had fallen apart and his son was also burdened with worry – he spoke of the need for Christians to support the hospice movement, whose fourfold purpose is the relief of patients from pain, psychological and spiritual care for patients so they can come to terms with and prepare for death, programmes to help patients live as actively and creatively as possible, promoting autonomy and self-esteem, and helping families cope during the patient’s illness and in bereavement.

On the legalisation of euthanasia, Tang showed using a case study in the U.S. State of Oregon where the bill was passed more than a decade ago allowing for Patient Assisted Suicide that it did not lead to Oregon becoming a ‘suicide capital’ as earlier predicted; out of its large population, only 541 persons opted for it, and out of that, only 341 actually took the lethal medication.

More surprisingly, of those who opted for PAS, only 39 percent articulated fears of being a burden to their families and communities, and less than three percent took the option for ‘financial’ reasons.

“Oregon didn’t become a suicide capital,” said Tang. “No other states followed.”

The issue became a moot one, according to him, and doctors focused more on developing palliative care as an alternative, better pain control, and better diagnosis and treatment of depression, and better medications with minimal side effects.

Edmond Chua
edmond@christianpost.com

For text of my talk, click here

Controversies in Defining Death

Controversies in the Determination of Death: A White Paper by the President's Council on Bioethics The President's Council on Bioethics Washington, D.C., January 2009

• Full Document (PDF)

A New Definition of Death

From WIRED

Bioethicists Save Organ Donation by Tweaking the Definition of Death

By Brandon Keim January 13, 2009 | 7:38:12 PMCategories: Bioethics

In response to an emerging moral controversy over whether most vital organs used in transplants are technically taken from living people, the President's Council on Bioethics issued a new report that defines brain death as the cessation of engagement with the world.

The report overturns the current neurological death standard's reliance on an outdated notion of the brain as the body's control center for physiological processes.

The Council's definition of life as a process of engagement, which might sound like so much philosophical mumbo-jumbo, could keep the number of organ transplants from plummeting.

"One is faced with a choice of saying that the notion of brain death doesn't work, and since you're not supposed to take organs from a donor until they're dead, we have to stop doing a lot of transplantation — or you can find a better explanation for why total brain failure constitutes the death of an organism," said Gilbert Meilaender, a Valparaiso University bioethicist and Council member. "We offer a better philosophical explanation."

read more

Image: Flickr/Rodrigo Basaure

See Also:

• Social Networking Speeds Organ Donation
• All Your Organ Are Belong to Us: UK Considers Opt-Out Organ Donation
  
• Televised Kidney Competition a Hoax
• China Needs to Rein in Out-of-Control Organ Market
• Organ 'Printing' Creates Beating Heart Cells
  
• Gene Therapy and the History of Organ Transplantation

The Right to Die? Caring Alternatives to Euthanasia

Mark Blocher, 1999, The Right to Die? Caring Alternatives to Euthanasia, Chicago: Moody Press

Mark B. Blocher is Director for the Center for Biblical Ethics. There are a few approaches to bioethics. In 1982 psychologist Carol Gilligan suggests that women and men approaches moral issues differently. This is taken up by feminist thinking ( I do not mean it in a negative sense). Women are more emphatic and intuitive which Gilligan call the 'ethic of care.' Men on the other other hand, then to follow rules and principles which was named 'ethic of right and justice.' However, these approaches are not strictly gender restrictive.

Blocher took on the ethic of care in relationship to his work on the dying. However, being a Baptist pastor and bioethicist, he wants to offer more than just what the "death with dignity" movement is offering. "Killing is not caring," he writes,"It may look compassion...even merciful but it is not." In the ethic of care, he finds that he can offer more.

Blocher suggests that Christians must be proactive in providing alternatives to assisted suicide and euthanasia while offering at least three promises to the terminally ill:

1. To the best of our ability, we will not allow you to die in pain

2. We will not allow you to be alone

3. You will not be a burden to anyone

Caring for the dying need commitment, sacrifice, and personal involvement.

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Final Exit: Dying with Dignity

Derek Humphry, 1991, 1996, Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying, New York: Dell Publishing. 2nd ed.

Derek Humphry, 1992, Dying with Dignity: Understanding Euthanasia, Secaucas, NJ: Carol Publishing Group


Derek Humphry caused a national sensation in the United States when he published Final Exit in which he argues that everyone has a right to die and has a right to ask others to help them to die. Humphry's personal experience when his first wife, Jean, who was suffering from terminal breast cancer and asked him to help her die affected him deeply.

After her death in 1975, he started the National Hemlock Society in 1980 which lobbies for legalisation of euthanasia and a 'right to die' movement.





Humphry's second book, Dying with Dignity serves as a companion to Final Exit in which he presented a 'systematic' considerations for the right-to-die movement.

Humphry writes a blog,Assisted-Suicide Blog.

Singapore Archbishop Condemns Euthanasia

Blogpastor posted about euthanasia. Please read his post to follow the interesting discussion. I post below the complete Pastoral Letter from Catholic News, the official newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Singapore.

Pastoral Letter of the Archbishop
On the issue of Euthanasia

Given on the Feast of All Saints 2008

My dear Priests, Religious and People of God,

In our country, the issue of Euthanasia (or Mercy Killing) has surfaced and making news in our local media. I am writing to categorically state that the Catholic Church condemns direct Euthanasia whether given voluntary or involuntary. You may want to refer to the article ‘Euthanasia’ published in the last issue of The CatholicNews. As early as 1980, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith has already stated clearly:

Intentionally causing one’s death, or suicide, is equally as wrong as murder; such an action on the part of a person is to be considered as a rejection of God’s sovereignty and loving plan.

This teaching reiterates what was already taught in Gaudium et Spes which “condemned crimes against life such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful suicide”.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church n.2277 makes it clear that, “Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of the handicapped, sick or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.”

Choosing to end one’s life is suicide and the formal cooperation with the suicide of others is “assisted suicide”. Both are immoral. If suicide and assisting suicide are immoral, a fortiori taking the life of a person without their consent, even with the intention of relieving their suffering cannot be allowed under any circumstances.

One cannot choose death and asked to be killed. When they do this they are not only committing the crime of suicide but also compounding it by making another person a partner in a crime. One must not yield to another person’s request for euthanasia. To yield to such request is false compassion. To have true compassion for the person is to understand that such a person requesting for euthanasia is actually feeling lost, confused, hopeless and alienated. Mercy entails supporting such persons through care and friendship. Similarly no healthcare professionals must even contemplate the option of administering euthanasia. Generally, the medical profession must reject euthanasia as is evidenced by the Hippocratic Oath as well as by more recent codes of medical ethics such as The Geneva Declaration (WHO, 1957) and the Helsinki Statement (WHO, 1964).

I end this pastoral letter by quoting the words of Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae which says:

In communion with the bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, as transmitted by the Church’s tradition and taught by the ordinary and Universal Magisterium.

May the Holy Spirit who is the Giver of Life guide you to a deeper appreciation for the gift of life.

Yours devotedly in Christ,
Mgr Nicholas Chia

The Straits Times 5th Nov 2008, Singapore carries an article titled Helping the dying with living.
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