May Life-Sustaining Treatment Be Withheld or Withdrawn? | Prof. Gina Noia

The Thomistic Institute

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4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was given on December 2, 2022, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Gina Maria Noia is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Resident Bioethicist at Belmont Abbey College. She received her Ph.D. in Theology and Health Care Ethics from Saint Louis University. She has served as a clinical ethicist for OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, IL and St. Alexius Hospital in St. Louis, MO, and she is published in Christian Bioethics and the Journal of Moral Theology. She and her husband, Justin, love spending time with their vivacious one-year-old boy.

Transcript

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0:38.9	because it matters what you think.
0:52.0	So the title of my talk is, may life-sustaining treatment be withheld or withdrawn, discerning
0:57.7	ordinary versus extraordinary means. I'd like to begin with a case. Jenny is 53 years old,
1:07.6	and she has been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. The cancer has spread throughout her body.
1:14.6	She is tired, mostly staying in bed. She has lost weight and she has significant back pain from
1:22.2	cancerous tumors. It's not possible to cure the cancer, but she has three options for medical treatment.
1:32.8	She could enroll in hospice to control her symptoms, pain management, and her other symptoms.
1:43.3	She could begin chemotherapy, which would have the aim of slowing the growth of the cancer,
1:50.0	shrinking the tumors and enabling her to live longer.
1:54.0	She also has the option of radiation, which would have the aim of shrinking the tumors that are causing
2:02.2	pain, but would not extend her life. Which should Jenny choose? Consider two positions. The first
2:12.6	is a subjectivist view, an ethical subjectivist view, according to which an action is right or wrong
2:20.6	just because the individual believes the action is right or wrong.
2:26.0	A subjectivist would say that whatever Jenny sincerely believes is right or wrong for her
2:32.5	determines what is right or wrong for her determines what is right or wrong for her,
2:35.6	regardless of any other considerations.
2:38.7	Including, for example, if Jenny believes that physician-assisted suicide is a morally permissible
2:44.9	option in this case, given her pain, given her limited life expectancy, a subjectivist would say that insofar as Jenny
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