Healthcare advance directives are legal documents by which individuals express their wishes regarding medical treatment and/or appoint a trusted person to speak for them any time they are unable to make treatment decisions for themselves. Not all advance directives are equal. Many have been drafted by people who fail to comprehend the reverence, awe, and deep respect […]
HEALTHCARE ADVANCE DIRECTIVES Read More »
In assessing when there is a duty to preserve life, the Church distinguishes between ordinary and extraordinary means.[1] Ordinary means must be taken to preserve life, and extraordinary means can be morally refused.[2] It is, therefore, critical to properly characterize particular means of preserving human life as ordinary or extraordinary, that is, as morally obligatory
ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY MEANS Read More »
When a healthcare provider recommends palliative care or hospice, patients and their families need guidance so they can make the most life-affirming decisions possible in their circumstances. The Task Force on Civil Rights in Health Care advises people to become informed and ask questions before electing a palliative care or hospice program. The goal of palliative
PALLIATIVE CARE AND HOSPICE Read More »
Louis Brown’s recorded talk from the 2020 Legatus Business Leadership Institute Virtual Conference. This Digital Health Care Conference was originally live-streamed in October 2020. Louis is the Executive Director of Christ Medicus.
DIGITAL HEALTH CARE CONFERENCE: ATTORNEY LOUIS BROWN (Video) Read More »
Attacks on autonomy and human dignity appear to be intensifying. Autonomy, of course, refers to our ability to act as independent human beings, with an innate and inviolable human dignity inherent to each of us, regardless of our physical, medical, emotional, psychological, or financial circumstances. It seems as if so many, however, are intent on
EUTHANASIA SUPPORTERS TOUT AUTONOMY OF VIOLENCE Read More »
In 2006, I was invited to speak in Alkoven, Austria at a conference on human rights located adjacent to Hartheim Castle. Hartheim Castle was built in the ninth century and, in the 19th century, it came to serve as a home for children with physical and mental disabilities. However, in the early 1940s, Hartheim’s humanitarian
PROTECT THE INSTITUTIONALIZED AND DEFEAT THE INHUMANITY OF EUGENICS Read More »
The Catholic teaching is clear: “The ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted.” (CCC 2279) Two Jesuit priests, Father John J. Paris, a professor emeritus at Boston College, and Father Kevin Wildes, a professor at St. Joseph’s University, recently published an article, “Making an idol of brain-injured patients.” The priests were
TERRI SCHIAVO, THE BRAIN INJURED AND CHURCH TEACHING Read More »
The difference between the Catholic perspective on the dignity and rights of human persons and those of many secular and liberal thinkers seems to be widening. The COVID-19 pandemic and recent events have only served to make the contrast even more stark between truly Catholic health care and other visions of public health or medicine.
IN CATHOLIC BIOETHICS ALL HUMAN LIVES ARE PRECIOUS Read More »
Much has been written about Jahi McMath in recent days. The 13-year-old Oakland, California girl underwent surgery December 9, 2013 to remove her tonsils. She was declared “brain-dead” after going into cardiac arrest. Since that time, experts have opined on the ethics of the brain-death declaration, the family’s decision to transfer her to another facility,
SCHINDLER: MY SISTER TERRI SCHIAVO WAS ALIVE LIKE JAHI MCMATH Read More »