Things to Ponder

Letters to the Editor published in today's New York Times are among the very best I have ever read. What an incredibly complex issue this is! Here are some of the more profound sentiments:

• She has a family willing and able to care for her, she is in no physical pain, and we have no way of knowing what she would choose for herself.
  What harm is done by letting her parents care for her, and whose rights are we talking about? The right to die is one thing; the right to have one's spouse pull the plug is quite another.
• Thus, a woman is permitted to die because the system could not prove that she wanted to live. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
• Three and a half years ago, the president received a memo warning of a noted terrorist's determination to attack America within its borders. He remained in Crawford, Tex., and did nothing.
  But to sign cobbled-together legislation to interfere in a matter that should have remained a personal family tragedy and to appeal to his religious political base, the president flew to Washington immediately.
• The only person qualified to make a decision in this tragic situation is her husband. So much for the sanctity of marriage.
• Removing her feeding tube so that she dies a slow death through starvation and dehydration - this, supposedly in the name of mercy - is intensely brutal and barbaric.
• It is an accepted medical practice to withhold tube feedings and intravenous fluids from terminally ill cancer patients. In 23 years of oncology practice, I cannot recall a patient whose suffering was increased by withholding tube feedings and intravenous fluids. In these cases, patients generally die from renal failure, which is perceived to be a painless way to die.