By Jared Fields, Managing Editor
The cutting edge of yesterday’s science is a dull butter knife today.
But with the ever-changing scientific world also comes an ever-changing ethics book.
Where is the line drawn between what is and is not “playing God?”
Today, more than ever, we are playing the role about God in our decisions of how to deal with controversial issues regarding the medical world.
I am no ethics expert nor can I speak for other people. But for me the only person I want playing God with my life is God himself.
Two years ago, the nation was torn by Terry Schiavo’s case. Under no circumstances would I want to be involved in a case like that.
I want someone to save my life if possible. I just want it to be saved, not left in medical limbo.
Defining what it means to “play God” is difficult. Is it performing any life-saving operation to prolong or save a life, or is it only when we act in a way that delays death by unnatural means?
I think “playing God” comes at the moment when we make decisions for someone else instead of letting nature run its course. I’m not referring to procedures like getting braces to straighten teeth that are genetically supposed to be crooked, but keeping someone clinically alive when their mind is already dead.
When the chances for recovery are lost, so should our attempts at playing God be given up. Taking chemo therapy or having the best medical treatment is different from knowing when the game is over.
The debate gets even tougher and I won’t begin to draw boundaries between doing what we can to better mankind and overstepping that line.
However, when it comes to me, let God star in the role of Himself. People should not try to fill in that role.
If I’m a vegetable, I don’t want to be kept around when I am half-dead and using up a hospital room, electricity and money. Besides not being economical, it’s very greedy.
I can’t understand how keeping someone alive by technicality is beneficial to anyone.
It doesn’t help the vegetative person.
Let them go. Give their organs away.
Make it easier for someone else to live, not harder to die.
If I’m a vegetable, I don’t want to be kept around when I am half-dead and using up a hospital room. electricity and money.
