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Futile, extraordinary or burdensome medical treatment

Futile, extraordinary or burdensome medical treatment

Euthanasia is not the same thing as refusing burdensome medical treatment.

Refusing such treatment can be seen as allowing the dying to die in an appropriate way, which is not the same thing as causing the death of the living.

But what is burdensome medical treatment? There is no standard answer; each case should be looked at separately, balancing the amount of pain and suffering involved against the amount of good to be done.

The issue is not the value of the life of the person concerned, but the value of the treatment to that person.

The sorts of treatment that can be stopped or refused because it's burdensome would include:

• experimental treatment
• treatment where the unpleasant side-effects are completely out of proportion to any possible benefit
  • In 1980 the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested that treatment for a dying patient should be proportionate to the therapeutic effect to be expected, and should not be disproportionately painful, intrusive, risky, or costly, in the circumstances.
• futile treatment that doesn't have any reasonable chance of doing good - other than keeping the patient from dying
• treatment that causes great suffering to the patient - and makes their overall situation worse
• treatment that causes great suffering to those who love the patient
• heroic treatment - which the medics carry out for their own sakes

Objections to this sort of treatment are much more common when the patient is close to death, and are also raised when a patient is in a persistent vegetative state and could continue to live in a coma for many years with treatment. This latter case is always controversial.

Experimental procedures

These are always extraordinary, but what is experimental in one year is standard a year or two later.

So in 2002 accepting an artificial heart would be be extraordinary and probably burdensome - because it would be a highly experimental procedure - but using a ventilator would be a standard procedure, and would only be burdensome if there were other factors involved.