The Declaration on Euthanasia lays out very specific guidelines for providing or not providing extraordinary means of life support: It is not euthanasia to decline the use of such means or even to discontinue them when it is clear that they are only death‑delaying. There is clearly no moral obligation to keep a body breathing and biologically alive after irreversible brain death has occurred. The Church teaches that God determines the time of death of every human being, and that it is just as impermissible to try to extend one’s life beyond that time as it is to attempt to end it before that time.Ī very real problem arises when artificial measures of resuscitation and life‑support become death‑delaying rather than properly life‑supporting. In any case, it will be possible to make a correct judgment as to the means by studying the type of treatment to be used, its degree of complexity or risk, its cost and the possibilities of using it, and comparing these elements with the result that can be expected, taking into account the state of the sick person and his or her physical and moral resources.Ĭhurch Teaching: Ordinary and Extraordinary MeansĬontrary to what pro‑euthanasia propagandists sometimes allege, the Catholic Church has never taught that every life must be extended to the last minute by all means possible. The Vatican’s Declaration on Euthanasia does this by calling for a balance between the various human and financial costs and benefits of using a particular treatment: However, we can use the concepts of proportionate and disproportionate means to clarify them. In 1973, the journal Pediatrics defined extraordinary means as “all medicines, treatments, and operations which cannot be obtained or used without excessive expense, pain, or other inconvenience for the patient or for others or which, if used, would not offer reasonable hope of benefit to the patient.” 1 Such standard definitions are by their very nature imprecise. This has allowed euthanasiasts to completely subvert the meaning of the term “extraordinary means.” Pro‑euthanasia groups have made a lot of progress by lodging in the public mind the specter of power‑hungry doctors “playing God” and squeezing every last agonizing second of life out of pain‑wracked, pitiful bodies. When preparing our own advance medical directives, or when assisting others to do so, it is critically important for us to know precisely where ordinary means of treatment end and extraordinary means begin.
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