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Article Excerpt
"I should like particularly, to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act." (1)
Those are the words of Pope John Paul II, speaking in March 2004 to an international congress held in Rome. The conference was on "Life-sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas," and it was organized by the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and the Pontifical Academy for Life. The pope was able to cut through all the ethical dilemmas. Although he acknowledged that a patient in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS, "shows no evident sign of self-awareness or of awareness of the environment, and seems unable to interact with others or to react to specific stimuli," he said that they should be kept alive indefinitely. Such patients, he insisted, "retain their...
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