In a medical ethics class on assisted suicide and euthanasia, I kept pushing our professor to acknowledge the dysfunctional logic in assuming that a person in a coma or vegetative state was a non-person. She continued to maintain that they weren’t thinking, and therefore weren’t persons. But we think we are persons not because we think, but because we are the kind of thing that can think. That’s why uncle John in a coma is still a person, and when he wakes up, he’s the same person. That’s why aunt Mary is a person even though she’s asleep on the couch in front of the TV. That’s why my two-year-old is a person even though he can’t yet count, read or reason… Not only does this kind of faulty reasoning justify infanticide and other unthinkable atrocities, it also leads to many contradictions of common sense.
As the discussion progressed, we came to the issue of the physician’s responsibility, especially in regard to referring. I was very surprised to hear even some of the more respectable students arguing that by becoming physicians we “abdicate our role as moral agents.” It just seems so silly, that in order to further a patient's right to do whatever they want, I have to be willing to break with any value, tradition, culture, etc. that I have ever held dear. And that’s one of the most tragic realities: that even good people are so confused about life, the truth, and who we are.
