MY TAKE ON IT - THAT PEOPLE 'DECLARED BRAIN DEAD' SHOULD BE KEPT 'ALIVE' ARTIFICIALLY, IF THE FAMILY INSISTS. FINIS !

 

This, of course, is an erroneous belief and expectation. The meeting of tertiary healthcare needs comes with a financial cost; somebody has to pay for it, and the more of it one person gets, the less there is to go around. 

Yes, it is very costly and it has to be 'rationed' and targeted. The medical professionals who allocate and dispense it has to do their cost benefit analysis. 

They have made decisions about who is likely to benefit from the treatment they are providing, and not just continue to dispense it because the  patient's parents want it to continue. 

Of course, if the parents and/or family are paying the economic costs of the treatment they are demanding, then, yes, the involved medical professionals, if they are allowed to might comply. 

Alternatively, other medical professionals, at the right price, might be willing to take over.

The fact is that, it is not the parents or families who insist and demand that, say the British National Health Service, should provide all the treatment that their artificially ventilated relative is receiving, though having been declared 'medically dead', for example. 

No. Although there is no denying that these parents and families are stricken with understandable grief and trauma. 

They are not 'heroes' who are more worthy of our sympathy and empathy than other parents and families who have experienced or are experiencing the trauma of their sons or daughter dying. 

Of parents who have accepted the medical opinion and gave their consent for the machine to be switched off. 

Parents who have, in my view, done the right thing and gave themselves the permission and the power to continue with their grieving and the rest of their lives.

Dying and death, after all, is common to all humans. It is a certainty that we will all die. We are born to die. 

So no, it is not this minority of parents and families who scorn and disrespect the medical teams caring for their children. 

Parents and families who, with the aid of the Christian Legal Fund, resort to the courts to press their, are, arguably, being selfish. 

As they are effectively wanting more resources to be spent on their relative, at the cost of it not being spent on other patients who have a better chance of benefiting from it. 

It is inevitable that poignant issues like this will become framed in the context of arguments based on 'morality', 'the perceived sanctity of life', 'personal choice', and religion faith.

However, while we can understand the emotional and personal feelings, in a world of scarcity of resources, the measure of who should be allocated what resources and for how long, has to be based on something more objective and logical. 

The welfare and common good of the many has to be prioritised above the low or non-viable viable demands of the individual.