by Mark Henry
The medical world was stunned last week by a study published in a prestigious medical journal revealing that a number of patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state could actually think and communicate. Experts are calling the study a “game changer” that will prompt changes in how patients in coma-like states will be treated in the future.
The study was evaluated in the February 3, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine in an article aptly titled “Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am) by MRI”. Doctors scanned a man’s brain while asking him questions like “is your father’s name Thomas”. They were astonished when the results of the scan showed that the man was able to think “yes” or “no’ answers by consciously changing his brain activity.
The author of the article, Dr. Allan M. Roper, said that the findings will make it “difficult to tell families confidently that their unresponsive loved ones are not in there somewhere.”
This study is re-igniting a controversy in the Catholic pro-life community about the medical profession’s using diagnostic terms like “brain death”, “vegetative state” and “minimally conscious state” to justify denying life sustaining medical care to a patient. This controversy is not just about semantics as the use of such terms to describe a patient’s medical condition can be a life or death matter. This is because any one of these diagnosis’s can result in a patient’s death by dehydration, their organs being harvested or suffering another form of medically induced death.
Dr. Paul Byrne, organizer of the February 2009 Signs of Life Conference in Rome, has long been an opponent of the brain death standard. When interviewed for this article, Dr. Byrne pointed out that while official Catholic teachings prohibit the taking of a person’s vital organs before death there remains much support for the brain death criteria within the Vatican.
According to Dr. Byrne, for many decades now medical professionals have supported “brain death” as the standard for determining when a person has died and their organs can be removed. Among the many criticisms of the brain death standard is that a person can be pronounced dead even though their heart is beating, they are breathing, they can digest food and even carry a child to term.
To most of us, such a person would be considered alive. However, if such a person was in a coma then under prevailing medical practice this person could be pronounced “brain dead” and their organs could be removed. According to Dr. Byrne, an organ donor’s vital organs are usually removed without giving then anesthesia. To support his point that “brain dead” patients are not really dead, Dr. Byrne points out that doctors who remove organs from such patients often see the patient move, their heart beat jump and their blood pressure rise rapidly during the organ incision.
When medical workers see an unanaesthetized patient’s physical reaction to the removal of their organs it can traumatize them. For that reason, organ donors in the U.S. are often injected with a paralyzing drug to control the patient and reduce trauma to the medical staff. How's that for misdirected compassion?
In light of these and other revelations, the Vatican’s support for brain death may be changing. In September 2008, Professor Lucetta Scaraffia, Vice-President of the Italian Association for Science and Life and a member of the Italian National Committee on Bio-Ethics, wrote a front page article in the Vatican newspaper L’Observatore Romano that was highly critical of the brain death standard.
While such a writing is not by any stretch considered Magisterial teaching, it is an indicator that the Vatican may be reassessing its support of the brain death standard.
Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schindler Schiavo, also weighed in on this development. When I interviewed Schindler, he said the story adds to the growing evidence critical of the persistent vegetative state ("PVS") diagnosis. Schindler also voiced his objection to using the PVS standard when diagnosing and treating people with severe head injuries.
In the case of Schindler’s sister, Terri, Schindler said that the doctor’s diagnosis that she was in a persistent vegetative state paved the way for denying her food and water resulting in her tragic death by dehydration.
The New England Journal of Medicine’s article will hopefully trigger a groundswell of support to change how doctor’s diagnose and treat people with serious brain injuries. This study will certainly be welcome news for families who have compassionately cared for brain injured loved ones in the face of a medical establishment that far too often treats these patients and their families cavalierly, without empathy and without the medical attention they need and deserve.
During the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop's annual meeting in 2009, the Bishops commendably adopted new guidelines requiring the provision of nutrition and hydration to patients in a persistent vegetative state. Let us hope and pray that this study discussed in the New England Journal of Medicine will be a light on the path to encourage the Church to continue further down this road and adopt new policies that protect helpless brain injured persons who desperately need the Church to be a vocal moral ally in their corner.
The Church could advance the Culture of Life by voicing disapproval of the medical establishment’s harsh approaches to dealing with people who are diagnosed as brain dead, in a persistent vegetative state or who are minimally conscious. A good starting point would be Magisterial teaching which categorically rejects the morally bankrupt “brain death” criteria and expunges the dehumanizing phrase “vegetative state" from Catholic health care lexicon.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Obama’s Budget and The Death of American Exceptionalism, R.I.P.
by Mark Henry
President Obama proposed 2011 Budget was released on Monday. The underlying nature of the federal budget always results in winners and losers, fiscally speaking, so it is not surprising that President Obama’s budget is generating criticism. However, if you look beyond the raw numbers and analyze the priorities reflected in the budget it opens your eyes to President Obama’s vision for America. Clearly, his is an extreme leftist vision that is disconnected from and contrary to the wishes of an increasing number of Americans of all political persuasions, especially people of faith.
One of America’s greatest accomplishments of the last century was the manned space program including the Apollo program which culminated in the moon landing. This historic period of American exploration was chronicled in a number of notable movies like “The Right Stuff”. The scientific advances and technological developments spawned from the space program are extensive and too numerous to itemize here. However, Obama’s new budget would effectively cancel the manned space program.
Obama’s plans to cancel America’s space program speaks volumes about his vision of America. The President has been described by some as the apologist-in-chief who feels compelled to publicly chastise America when he interacts with the international community. He seemingly views America’s manned space program as an irritating example of American achievement. Excellence and achievement just don’t fit in with the principle of mandated equal results which is the cornerstone of socialism. America’s space program, one of the crown jewels of American accomplishment, is just the wrong stuff in President Obama’s eyes. Obama’s proposed budget seeks to push America away from acheivement and take our nation down the path of mediocrity.
Obama’s budget also plans on reducing the tax incentives for charitable giving. When you look at what makes our country great, the exceptional charity of Americans comes to mind. Americans give much more to charity than any other nation in the world. The tremendous outpouring of financial support in Haiti is part of a long history of Americans individually stepping forward to help suffering people throughout the world. Much of this outpouring of financial assistance comes from faith-based organizations rather than the government.
The charitable behavior of Americans contrasts starkly with Europeans who are coddled by socialist governments that provide for every need. In a recent speech, Conservative author Dennis Prager said “The European knows: The government, the state, will take care of me, my children, my parents, my neighbors and my community. I don't have to do anything. The bigger question in many Europeans' lives is, "How much vacation time will I have and where will I spend that vacation?".
Obama’s plans to revise tax policies to discourage charitable giving are a hatchet attack on the positive role charitable organizations, including myriads of Catholic charities, play in American society. It’s all part of an Obama vision to transform America into a more European like socialistic country. What this would mean for America is to make an already big government even bigger and to change the independent American character into someone else, a person who does not value faith, service to others, self-reliance or freedom.
President Obama’s budget also calls for a plan to end subsidies which underwrite private bank involvement in student loans. The savings generated by ending these federal subsidies would be used to increase Pell grants which are the main federal program to help poor students attend college.
The short-term impact of these changes would be to squeeze out private lenders from the business of making student loans. The federal government would become the sole single provider of government-backed student loans. Chalk up one more industry taken over by the voracious federal government.
In this regard, President Obama is pushing a single payer/provider strategy which is similar to the single payer idea which he tried to ram through with the recent attempted federal takeover of health care insurance. Evidently, President Obama feels he has a better chance of getting his way with college students than he did with the more politically seasoned seniors who opposed him in the failed health care takeover debacle.
There is a more troubling aspect of the proposed student loan changes which further illuminates the socialistic agenda underlying aspects of Obama’s budget. What Obama is proposing is that if you choose to go into "public service," any college loan debts will be forgiven ten years after you leave college. This is a “making big government even bigger” plan which seeks to draft America’s youth into the already bloated ranks of government bureaucracy.
In the last six decades, the number of Americans employed by the government has grown five times faster than the population. However, President Obama believes this is not enough; his plan would dramatically increase the numbers of government employees. This will be accomplished by the dual strategy of student loan forgiveness bribes to the youth to herd them into the government bureaucracy and by over taxing and over regulating businesses to the point that working in the private sector is a financially unattractive career path. It’s all part of the socialist playbook to make the individual smaller and big government even bigger.
Of even greater concern to Catholics are the Obama budget provisions that would increase federal funding for abortion. The Title X family planning program’s funding of Planned Parenthood would increase to $327,356,000. The budget also proposes the elimination of abortion funding limits affecting the Legal Services Corporation as well as the continuation of abortion funding for the United Nations Population Fund which promotes abortion across the world.
Underlying these and other provisions contained in the Obama budget are policies which seek to expand the size and reach of the federal government and to weaken the faith, resolve and resources of those who stand in the way. The desired end result of these policies is to transform America into a socialistic welfare state that would be both unrecognizable to the Founding Fathers and far removed from the Judeo-Christian principles which our country was founded upon. It does not seem to matter that these policies have consistently failed when implemented either in Europe or elsewhere.
How then should the Catholic community respond to the many objectionable provisions contained in the Obama budget? Once again, we are blessed by the enduring insights of Pope John Paul II. In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II harshly criticized the corruption of the modern democratic state in which citizens with religious beliefs are viewed with great suspicion. The Pope went on to condemn the welfare state stating that it undermined the core principle of subsidiarity. The welfare state discourages human initiative and results in an excessive increase of public bureaucracies. This results in an enormous increase in spending by a government whose goal is to achieve its own statist agenda rather than to serve the public.
Pope John Paul II’s observations on the welfare state shed a bright light on the fundamentally flawed ideologies that underlie these provisions of the Obama budget.
Further, Catholics who seek to follow the tenets of Catholic teachings on abortion will be strongly opposed to the Obama budget’s plan to expand federal funding of abortion. Pope John Paul II’s landmark encyclical Gospel of Life taught us that all human life has value. In Worthiness To Receive Communion, General Principles, Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger) stated that while Catholics could disagree on many issues, abortion is a grave sin and Catholics are obligated to adhere to the Church’s teachings on these issues.
These Catholic teachings on the welfare state and abortion are directly on point to America as our country stands at an epic politicalcrossroads. As such, Catholics would do well to heed these teachings as we decide how to respond to the political and economic challenges posed by President Obama’s budget.
President Obama proposed 2011 Budget was released on Monday. The underlying nature of the federal budget always results in winners and losers, fiscally speaking, so it is not surprising that President Obama’s budget is generating criticism. However, if you look beyond the raw numbers and analyze the priorities reflected in the budget it opens your eyes to President Obama’s vision for America. Clearly, his is an extreme leftist vision that is disconnected from and contrary to the wishes of an increasing number of Americans of all political persuasions, especially people of faith.
One of America’s greatest accomplishments of the last century was the manned space program including the Apollo program which culminated in the moon landing. This historic period of American exploration was chronicled in a number of notable movies like “The Right Stuff”. The scientific advances and technological developments spawned from the space program are extensive and too numerous to itemize here. However, Obama’s new budget would effectively cancel the manned space program.
Obama’s plans to cancel America’s space program speaks volumes about his vision of America. The President has been described by some as the apologist-in-chief who feels compelled to publicly chastise America when he interacts with the international community. He seemingly views America’s manned space program as an irritating example of American achievement. Excellence and achievement just don’t fit in with the principle of mandated equal results which is the cornerstone of socialism. America’s space program, one of the crown jewels of American accomplishment, is just the wrong stuff in President Obama’s eyes. Obama’s proposed budget seeks to push America away from acheivement and take our nation down the path of mediocrity.
Obama’s budget also plans on reducing the tax incentives for charitable giving. When you look at what makes our country great, the exceptional charity of Americans comes to mind. Americans give much more to charity than any other nation in the world. The tremendous outpouring of financial support in Haiti is part of a long history of Americans individually stepping forward to help suffering people throughout the world. Much of this outpouring of financial assistance comes from faith-based organizations rather than the government.
The charitable behavior of Americans contrasts starkly with Europeans who are coddled by socialist governments that provide for every need. In a recent speech, Conservative author Dennis Prager said “The European knows: The government, the state, will take care of me, my children, my parents, my neighbors and my community. I don't have to do anything. The bigger question in many Europeans' lives is, "How much vacation time will I have and where will I spend that vacation?".
Obama’s plans to revise tax policies to discourage charitable giving are a hatchet attack on the positive role charitable organizations, including myriads of Catholic charities, play in American society. It’s all part of an Obama vision to transform America into a more European like socialistic country. What this would mean for America is to make an already big government even bigger and to change the independent American character into someone else, a person who does not value faith, service to others, self-reliance or freedom.
President Obama’s budget also calls for a plan to end subsidies which underwrite private bank involvement in student loans. The savings generated by ending these federal subsidies would be used to increase Pell grants which are the main federal program to help poor students attend college.
The short-term impact of these changes would be to squeeze out private lenders from the business of making student loans. The federal government would become the sole single provider of government-backed student loans. Chalk up one more industry taken over by the voracious federal government.
In this regard, President Obama is pushing a single payer/provider strategy which is similar to the single payer idea which he tried to ram through with the recent attempted federal takeover of health care insurance. Evidently, President Obama feels he has a better chance of getting his way with college students than he did with the more politically seasoned seniors who opposed him in the failed health care takeover debacle.
There is a more troubling aspect of the proposed student loan changes which further illuminates the socialistic agenda underlying aspects of Obama’s budget. What Obama is proposing is that if you choose to go into "public service," any college loan debts will be forgiven ten years after you leave college. This is a “making big government even bigger” plan which seeks to draft America’s youth into the already bloated ranks of government bureaucracy.
In the last six decades, the number of Americans employed by the government has grown five times faster than the population. However, President Obama believes this is not enough; his plan would dramatically increase the numbers of government employees. This will be accomplished by the dual strategy of student loan forgiveness bribes to the youth to herd them into the government bureaucracy and by over taxing and over regulating businesses to the point that working in the private sector is a financially unattractive career path. It’s all part of the socialist playbook to make the individual smaller and big government even bigger.
Of even greater concern to Catholics are the Obama budget provisions that would increase federal funding for abortion. The Title X family planning program’s funding of Planned Parenthood would increase to $327,356,000. The budget also proposes the elimination of abortion funding limits affecting the Legal Services Corporation as well as the continuation of abortion funding for the United Nations Population Fund which promotes abortion across the world.
Underlying these and other provisions contained in the Obama budget are policies which seek to expand the size and reach of the federal government and to weaken the faith, resolve and resources of those who stand in the way. The desired end result of these policies is to transform America into a socialistic welfare state that would be both unrecognizable to the Founding Fathers and far removed from the Judeo-Christian principles which our country was founded upon. It does not seem to matter that these policies have consistently failed when implemented either in Europe or elsewhere.
How then should the Catholic community respond to the many objectionable provisions contained in the Obama budget? Once again, we are blessed by the enduring insights of Pope John Paul II. In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II harshly criticized the corruption of the modern democratic state in which citizens with religious beliefs are viewed with great suspicion. The Pope went on to condemn the welfare state stating that it undermined the core principle of subsidiarity. The welfare state discourages human initiative and results in an excessive increase of public bureaucracies. This results in an enormous increase in spending by a government whose goal is to achieve its own statist agenda rather than to serve the public.
Pope John Paul II’s observations on the welfare state shed a bright light on the fundamentally flawed ideologies that underlie these provisions of the Obama budget.
Further, Catholics who seek to follow the tenets of Catholic teachings on abortion will be strongly opposed to the Obama budget’s plan to expand federal funding of abortion. Pope John Paul II’s landmark encyclical Gospel of Life taught us that all human life has value. In Worthiness To Receive Communion, General Principles, Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger) stated that while Catholics could disagree on many issues, abortion is a grave sin and Catholics are obligated to adhere to the Church’s teachings on these issues.
These Catholic teachings on the welfare state and abortion are directly on point to America as our country stands at an epic politicalcrossroads. As such, Catholics would do well to heed these teachings as we decide how to respond to the political and economic challenges posed by President Obama’s budget.
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