The Catholic Weekly 2 August 2020

24 NEWS 2, August, 2020 TRADITIONAL FUNERAL DIRECTORS gregoryandcarr.com.au LOCATIONS BROOKVALE | GORDON | MONA VALE | NORTH RYDE | NORTH STRATHFIELD Gregory and Carr’s dedicated staff is available 24-hours a day, every day of the year to help you through one of the most difficult times of your life. PROUDLY AUSTRALIAN FAMILY OWNED & OPERATED 1800 266 588 THE DEATH of Michael Hick- son, a 46-year-old quadriple- gic, inside an Austin, Texas, hospice in June, pricked the conscience of Charlie Camo- sy. Camosy is an associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham Uni- versity in New York, and for most of his academic life, he has waged a quixotic battle against often-hidden cultural forces that, except for the pan- demic and the scrutiny it has focused onmedical decisions, might have gone unnoticed. Hickson, an African Amer- ican with a serious brain in- jury, was hospitalised with COVID-19 at St David’s Hos- pital South Austin. Despite his cognitive impairments, his wife, Melissa, said he could solve math problems and play trivia. His physical condition admittedly was grave. He was receiving food and water through a stomach tube. Shortly after being admit- ted to the hospital, a family dispute over the course of his care ensued, which resulted in the power to make those decisions being given to the state and the hospital’s medi- cal team. While Melissa wanted Mi- chael to continue to be given food and hydration in the ICU in hopes that her husband could beat back the disease, his doctor told her any further medical intervention would not improve his “quality of life.” The medical team and the state had determined that only hospice care would be offered. On her own, Melissa secret- ly recorded a conversation she had with the doctor, which is legal in Texas. Melissa did not want her husband intubated, which involves inserting a tube through the mouth and into the airway so a patient can be placed on a ventilator to assist with breathing. But she did want him to be given food, water, oxygen andmedi- cine to give him any chance to improve. Certainly, that could not be considered burden- some treatment. The doctor remarked that any aggressive treatment would not “help him improve anything” because “as of right now, the quality of life ... he The medical guillotine doesn’t have much of one.” Melissa was shocked by that answer. “What do you mean? Be- cause he’s paralysed with a brain injury, he doesn’t have quality of life?” “Correct.” The doctor went on to tell Melissa that he had cared for three other patients who sur- vived in Michael’s condition, but he qualified that by say- ing Michael’s case didn’t “fit those three.” The defining dif- ference, the doctor told Melis- sa, was that his “quality of life is different from theirs. ... They were walking and talking peo- ple.” But the medical panel had made its decision. Michael died of pneumonia six days after the withdrawal of nu- trition and hydration had weakened and then stilled his body. He left behind a wife and five kids. This was not a case inwhich the hospital faced a shortage of beds during a grave mo- ment of the pandemic. It was a case, Fordham’s Camosy said, of euthanasia, pure and simple. “According to the Catho- Any time there’s a ‘quality of life’ judgment made - where it’s not the burden of the treatment - that’s a concern.” Charlie Camosy, ethicist ¾ ¾ Peter Finney A healthcare worker cares for a coronavirus patient. PHOTO: CNS/LUCY NICHOLSON, REUTERS A healthcare facility’s decision to hasten a patient’s death alarms ethicist about where we’re heading lic moral theological defi- nition of euthanasia, it’s an act or omission which aims at death,” Camosy said. “Any time there’s a ‘quality of life’ judgment made – where it’s not the burden of the treat- ment – that’s a concern. Even his wife didn’t want him to be intubated.” “The doctor thought that what made him different from the others who survived is that they were walking and talking,” Camosy explained. The doctor had every chance to say, ‘He’s just too sick, he’s not going to recover, there’s no point.’ No. He spe- cifically mentioned three oth- ers in his situation ... and what makes them different is they were walking and talking, and he was not.” Melissa has used social media to raise attention over what she believes was unfair treatment of her husband de- cided on by the hospital with approval of a court-appointed legal guardian, Family Elder- care. She claims her husband was “murdered” and feels the doctor wouldn’t treat him be- cause he was disabled. Dr DeVry Anderson, St Da- vid’s Chief Medical Officer, said in a 2 July statement that “misinformation” has been spread about the case and claimed “it wasn’t medically possible to save” Daniel. In his book ResistingThrow- away Culture , Camosy writes that very often language and practices are employed “to hide, to throw away people from us so we’re not confront- ed with them.” Viewed through the lens of over 143,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US and global economic paralysis, it is dif- ficult to imagine anything positive emerging from these past seven months. However, Camosy says tragedy has a way of creating a thunderclap of conscience. “If there’s a silver lining in this pandemic, it has forced us to look – and now the ques- tion is, will we do anything now that we’ve seen?” Camo- sy told the Clarion Herald , newspaper of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. “The medical community is very good at not allowing public scrutiny of these kinds of situations. “But, anecdotally, from what I saw on social media and from the people who emailed me or otherwise got in touch with me after they saw my social media posts, plenty of people have said, ‘This was me.’ ‘This was my cousin.’ ‘This was my wife.’ They were very dramatic statements about this not be- ing an isolated situation.” As the pandemic began, Camosy’s was among the first voices crying out when several US states, including New York, ordered elderly COVID-19 pa- tients who did not need ICU care back into nursing homes, which led to an explosion of cases amid the most vulnera- ble population possible. “Fifty per cent of people in nursing homes have some kind of dementia, and de- mentia is listed as one of the most important co-morbidi- ties for populations to be wor- ried about,” Camosy said. “The idea that we would send thousands and thou- sands of COVID-positive pa- tients into some of the worst spaces for the spread of the disease – where the most vul- nerable patients are – was just an unbelievably terrible deci- sion.” Camosy believes the church can step up during the pandemic by offering its empty schools and convents as places where the elderly can be safely housed and their dignity respected. “Especially, as the culture gets older, it would be a fan- tastic way the church could respond,” he said. Camosy said another way to honour the dignity of the el- derly is to pass legislation that would help families care for their ageing parents in their homes. “That would be ideal, espe- cially in a pandemic,” Camosy said. “We’ve now realised how important it is to keep people at home. That’s another prob- lem of the two-parent income trap. We just have so many people who need to work that taking care of loved ones is re- ally difficult at times.” At 45, Camosy is in his 13th year of teaching at Jesuit-run Fordham, and he has thought deeply about how to enlight- en his young, job-directed students with thinking that is foreign to them: The value of a human being cannot be based on utilitarian calculus. “I don’t think kids get it, be- cause at a place like Fordham ... [they] have been largely trained by their parents and the culture to just achieve, to make goals and achieve goals,” Camosy said. “And so, that means, ‘Go wherever is necessary, even if it means moving across the country.’ That means their parents have to figure it out. Often, it’s the parents who are pushing and saying, ‘Don’t worry about me. Go live your dreams.’” He added, “I wonder if we could have a countercultural message as a church about ‘localism,’ about putting down roots, and having multiple generations of family around to help take care of each other, especially as we age, andmay- be a little less focus on telling our kids they can be and do whatever they want.” - CNS NEW

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODcxMTc4