Starved of love?

A report on R4s Today programme today told of a man complaining about the medical treatment his wife, who was in a long term 'vegetative' state had received.  His principal complaint was about her being included in a drug trial following permission being granted by a Court whom the family had petitioned to allow her not to be kept alive.  After discussing his unhappiness about the drug trial, the man spoke of how dreadful it is that it took 2 weeks for his wife to die once food and water were withdrawn.  He compared her protracted death to the experience of animals whose lives in similar circumstances would be painlessly ended.

 

Of course at one level he makes a valid point in comparing the legality of human and animal 'medicalised' deaths but I think there's one really significant factor which he seems not to have considered.  And that is that if he loved his wife and also wished to spare his family this dreadful experience of watching a slow death by dehydration and starvation, then his moral duty, imo, superceded the strictures of the law.

 

I know it seems harsh and I do realise that such severe stress can put people's moral compass off balance, but to criticise medics who choose to obey the law rather than take the personal and professional risk involved in actively ending a life - and a life with which they have no personal connection - whilst himself standing by and watching someone he knew and loved die such a dreadful and inhumane death when he too could have brought matters to a speedy conclusion is utterly incomprehensible.

 

Or is it just me?