An exchange on the ethics of tube feeding and its withdrawal.
Ford is to be congratulated on his recognition, shared with the Pope, of the humanity of PVS patients, and on his desire in principle to reject the deliberate ending of their lives. But his arguments in favour of withdrawing tube-feeding are not so benign, and those which refer to the undesirability of prolonging life as such are rather worrying. As Ford says himself, all human lives are worth living; it follows that the extension of severely disabled lives is not something bad per se, if the means used are reasonable. Death is “natural” only in the sense that illness and pain are “natural”: these are “natural evils” which should often be prevented, whatever good fruits they may bring. To offer, at very least, basic nursing care to those who are persistently unconscious powerfully signals the value we place on their “being” – their presence in the world.
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