On Sunday, January 3rd, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article entitled "Catholic decree on comatose patients." The writer relied heavily on the website opinions of Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, a leading advocate of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. The Chronicle article and the Lee blogs have received a good deal of national attention.

These writers are addressing the 2009 revisions to Part Five and Directive 58 of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs). The last revision of these Directives was made in 2001. At that time, the Vatican had not addressed the morality of providing medically-assisted nutrition and hydration (MANH) to patients in a vegetative state (PVS).

by Gerald D. Coleman, S.S,
Vice President, Corporate Ethics, Daughters of Charity Health System

Since the 1980s, there have been a number of high profile cases involving persons receiving medically assisted nutrition and hydration (MANH), e.g., Claire Conroy, Paul Brophy, Nancy Cruzan, Hugh Finn, and Terri Schiavo. The provision of nutrition and hydration through the use of various medical interventions, sometimes referred to as “tube feeding,” is one of the most complex and controversial issues in contemporary bioethics.

Legal and moral debate has frequently arisen about tube feeding for a person in a persistent/permanent vegetative state (PVS). While these patients sustain certain brain functions such as wake/sleep cycles and automatic nervous system functions, all detectible activity of the neocortex has ceased, with virtually no expected prospects for recovery.

Commentary by Carol Hogan

During 2004 Californians were promised “cures” for all kinds of chronic illnesses and debilitating injuries if Proposition 71 became law.  Believing the hype, voters passed the initiative—a constitutional amendment that indebted the state for $3 billion ($6 billion with interest), guaranteed scientists the right to do stem cell research, incentivized embryo-destructive stem cell research, and excluded the oversight of the Legislature and/or the Governor.

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What is an embryo?

An embryo is the earliest form of human life.  Naturally, an embryo is created when sperm and egg meet and unite within a woman’s body.  In the 1970s scientists perfected the technique of fertilizing a woman’s egg with selected sperm in the laboratory (in vitro fertilization—IVF), and then implanting the resulting embryo into a woman’s uterus.   The first child born of this procedure was Louise Brown in 1978.  Since then, thousand of children have been so conceived and born.  In addition, thousands of embryos artificially produced have been held in frozen suspension.  These embryos have been referred to as “spare” and have been sought by scientists for purposes of experimentation.