By Michael Arthur Vacca and Louis Brown Jr.
The American Academy of Neurology has altered its guidelines, at great cost to the life and dignity of patients.
What if your local hospital could declare your family member “brain dead” even though part of her brain was still functioning? What if the hospital could use that illegitimate diagnosis of brain death to then decide to withhold life-sustaining treatment from her and thereby passively euthanize her? And furthermore, what would your reaction be if you were told that there are financial incentives for health entities to withhold the ordinary means of life-sustaining treatment, should your family member suffer significant brain trauma? Tragically, this scenario is possible in our current health-care system today. We believe that the likelihood of its happening to someone you love is growing in the wake of a little-noticed change in a medical association’s brain-death guidelines.
Read the entire article at National Review Online.
Michael Arthur Vacca, J.D., is the director of bioethics at the Christ Medicus Foundation. Louis Brown Jr., J.D., is the executive director of Christ Medicus Foundation and the associate director of the Center for Law and the Human Person at the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law.