A[nother] Poet on Right to Die

Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Leary and, well, now that I think about it lots of writers and figures whose lives represented a "stand on independence" with regard to death and experience have long found ways to build death into a narrative long before it occurs. In a memo from Rome in the New York Times, Italian Poet

Piergiorgio Welby is still full of words, hard and touching ones, that may be changing the way Italy thinks about euthanasia and other choices for the sick to end their own lives.

A vigil in Milan on Saturday supported Mr. Welby’s bid to have life support disconnected. “I love life, Mr. President,” Mr. Welby, 60, who has battled muscular dystrophy for 40 years, wrote to Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, in September. “Life is the woman who loves you, the wind through your hair, the sun on your face, an evening stroll with a friend. “Life is also a woman who leaves you, a rainy day, a friend who deceives you. I am neither melancholic nor manic-depressive. I find the idea of dying horrible. But what is left to me is no longer a life.” Now Mr. Welby’s long drama appears to be nearing its final act. Last weekend, an Italian court denied legal permission for a doctor to sedate him and remove him from his respirator. Fully lucid but losing his capacity to speak and eat, he is deciding whether to appeal or to perform an act of civil disobedience that will kill him.

He is doing so in a very public way. Until a recent steep decline in his condition, he used a little stick to rapidly peck out blog entries with one hand. His book, “Let Me Die,” was just released. Near daily front-page stories chronicle the political, ethical and, with the Catholic Church a vital force here, religious issues his case presents.

“Dear Welby: Wait Before Taking Yourself Off” the respirator, read a front-page headline on Tuesday in La Repubblica, written by a top Italian surgeon, Dr. Ignazio Marino, who is also a senator for the Democrats of the Left. He had visited Mr. Welby the day before.

What has given the case a particular political twist is that Mr. Welby, attached to a respirator for nine years, has long been a spokesman for euthanasia and is a central part of the Radical Party’s effort to have it legalized. In fact, members of the Radical Party have offered to personally remove his respirator if asked — and may do so any day now in a frontal challenge to Italian law.

But the Catholic Church and many of this traditionally minded nation’s politicians on the left and the right not only oppose euthanasia generally but are also not entirely sure what to do about Mr. Welby’s case. He says he is not seeking to commit suicide but to remove himself from medical treatment he does not want.

“It is an unbearable torture,” he wrote two weeks ago.

[hat tip Sheila Otto]

Conflicts of Interest Everywhere

The Lancet is engaged in scandalous destruction and obfuscation of data on the relationship between abortion and breast cancer. So goes the story on Businesswire, in which an editorial by Ed Furton in Ethics and Medics journal is credited with making the charge. The story announces the finding by the ethics journal as though Lancet has been caught in a real moral morass. But ... Ethics and Medics, it turns out, is a publication of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and their editorial was highlighted by the Coalition of Abortion and Breast Cancer. Now who would guess that the charges in the editorial involve the claim that the Lancet and cancer research community in general are deliberately "corrupting scientific research examining the abortion-breast cancer link."

JAMA is running a great set of articles on the relationship between ethics and the bioscience business; Psaty and colleagues review "Potential for Conflict of Interest in the Evaluation of Suspected Adverse Drug Reactions: Use of Cerivastatin and Risk of Rhabdomyolysis," and Brian Strom replies. Fontanarosa, Rennie and DeAngelis discuss drug withdrawals in an accompanying article. Jeremy Sugarman reviews Margaret Eaton's book Ethics and the Business of Bioscience. (subscription required).

Bioethics Journal Charges Lancet, Scientific Community with Cancer Cover Up

So goes the story on Businesswire, in which an editorial by Ed Furton. Ethics and Medics, it turns out, is a publication of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and their editorial was highlighted by the Coalition of Abortion and Breast Cancer. Now who would guess that the charges in the editorial involve the claim that the Lancet and cancer research community in general are deliberately "corrupting scientific research examining the abortion-breast cancer link."

Swiss Voters Support Embryonic Stem Cell Research

In the first vote ever by a populace on the legality of embryonic stem cell research, Swiss affirmed a government plan to use (only) leftover embryos of a particular age, and only when those embryos would not be used otherwise. Opponents included both the influential Swiss Catholic Church and the Green Party.

Papal Statement on Euthanasia

Pope John Paul spoke today of the evils of euthanasia, using interesting new language. He described what he termed as distortion of ethics, namely the conversion of compassion into a "suppression of human life" through the desire to support it. It is not clear to me what the Pope meant, but his words were provocative:

Euthanasia is among the dramas of an ethic that presumes to establish who can live and who must die

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Now Come the Days of the Evil Clones of Death (UPDATED)

Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, revealed from Rome today that human cloning is "more dangerous than weapons of mass destruction." UPDATED: the Cardinal might soon become pope.

Jon Eisenberg on the State of Schiavo: Not Good

The news is not encouraging from Florida on the most significant end-of-life case of the year.

Gov. Bush, the Schindlers and their supporters are now taking a two-pronged approach to forestalling the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube despite the Florida Supreme Court's decision, and so far they have achieved success on both fronts. In the Florida Supreme Court case, Gov. Bush has obtained a 30-day stay of the court's decision in order to to give him time to ask the United States Supreme Court to take the case and issue a further stay. Meanwhile, the Schindlers filed a motion in the trial court asking the judge to hold a retrial on the issue of Terri Schiavo's wishes in light of the Pope's recent statement regarding tube feeding of PVS patients. According to the Schindlers, Terri, who was Catholic, would take the Pope's statement to mean she must remain on tube feeding. The judge denied the motion, citing a prior appellate court determination that Terri "did not regularly attend mass or have a religious advisor who could assist the court in weighing her religious attitude about life-support methods." However, the judge also issued an emergency stay of the feeding-tube removal until December 6, 2004, to give the Schindlers time to appeal this order. No doubt the Schindlers will file an appeal and ask for a further stay from the state Court of Appeal court pending the decision on the appeal. Thus, there are now two temporary stays in place. I think it doubtful that the Supreme Court will take the case and issue a stay, but I think it likely that the Court of Appeal will issue a stay pending its decision on the Pope motion, which will likely last for the better part of a year or longer.

Vatican Backs Total Cloning Ban Including for Stem Cells

No surprise here, although it still remains to be explained how Catholics arrive at the notion that a nuclear transfer derived colony of cells with no potential for birth can be called an embryo. More in Catholic News.

Baptists and Stem Cells

Chris Mooney is as usual on top of everything and today found a pretty amazing piece in the Baptist Press identifying a new focus among conservative Baptists on stem cell research. The description of the position comes in a summary of a major panel in Nashville and features a description of stem cell research as a new slave trade on the horizon. This is election relevant for sure and speaks volumes about the alignment of fundamentalist protestants with the Catholic perspective on embryonic stem cell research. No nuance is allowed concerning cells sourced from non-viable embryo-like organisms.