Bioethics chairman speaks out against euthanasia, assisted suicide

Published: 2005-05-02

BALTIMORE (CNS) -- The chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics told a Baltimore audience of health care workers and executives, priests and seminarians gathered at St. Mary's Seminary and University April 27 that the act of removing the feeding tube from Terri Schindler Schiavo amounted to killing her rather than letting her die. Dr. Leon R. Kass made the comments in a question-and-answer period following his delivery of the seminary's annual John Carroll lecture on religion and society in which he addressed issues involving death with dignity and the sanctity of life. It was a timely topic given the recent very public but very different deaths of Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who died March 31, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed, and Pope John Paul II, who died April 2 of septic shock and what was termed "irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse." In his remarks, Kass noted that current debate about assisted suicide makes the notion of death with dignity and the sanctity of life appear to be opposing forces. "I don't accept the polarization, he said, adding that the concepts of the sanctity of life and death with dignity are "entirely compatible" with allowing someone to die naturally, "but never with deliberately killing."

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