A couple of people have contacted me to point out the Eluana Englaro tragedy in Italy – a tragedy that has played out over the past few weeks. Englaro, who died yesterday, was at a center of a life-and-death dispute that involved her father, the Italian courts, Italian legislators, Italy’s president and prime minister, and the Vatican.
Englaro has been described in the media reports as being in a vegetative state for 17 years. Her parents fought in court to have her feeding tube removed – and won. Legislative efforts were underway to prohibit the dehydration death of Englaro when she died after only 4 days after having her feeding tube removed.
Instead of providing a bunch of different links, I’d suggest that anyone who wants to know more can perform a search on “Eluana Englaro” and come up with hundreds of articles to choose from for more information.
Having said that, however, one news agency deserves special mention for outstandingly inaccurate and outrageous coverage of the Englaro tragedy.
Flavia Krause-Jackson and Steve Scherer of Bloomberg News both deserve “credit” (discredit would be more accurate) for filing news stories that inaccurately referred to Englaro as “brain-dead” and “force-fed.”
To be fair, it’s possible that maybe Krause-Jackson and Scherer weren’t personally responsible for the repeated use of the term “brain-dead” in article headlines.
However, they clearly chose to use the term “force-fed” to describe the delivery of nutritional supplements to Englaro through a feeding tube.
Wikipedia describes “force-feeding” this way:
Force-feeding, which in some circumstances is also called gavage, is the practice of feeding a person or an animal against their will.
The image that the term “force-feeding” conjures is a violent act inflicted against an unwilling and resisting “victim.”
How can a person described as permanently unconscious resist? How can she be “force-fed?”
Answer – she can’t. The use of the term is the work of dramatists – it’s certainly not journalism.
Speaking of answers, many would like an explanation for the unexpectedly swift death of Englaro – dehydration generally takes much longer than four days to kill a person. –Stephen Drake
Italy has no law about advance care directives, but I find hard to believe that Eluana Englaro’s living will would have been different from the one defended by her father.
Witnesses (family and friends) have testified that Eluana Englaro would not have wanted to be kept alive in a vegetative state, and the courts have sentenced that her father was acting in her sole interest. In the absence of a law, the case was decided on the basis of the constitutional right to refuse a medical treatment.
I think that even if one disagrees with the reasons given by Eluana Englaro herself (when she was conscious), and later by her family, friends, and ‘supporters’, her will had to be respected. You cannot wait and see forever without negating the substance of that will.
I frankly disagree with your tagging your post with ‘wrongful death’.
An update: while the results of the toxicological exams will take some more days, the autopsy has not revealed anything troubling.
Finally, I do not condone talking about ‘brain dead’ conditions and ‘force feeding’, but if the Vatican’s effort to give Italy a law on advance care directives will succeed (as it will probably be the case, with Berlusconi’s help), people will be actually subject to force-feeding as soon as they fall unconscious, even if they stated their refusal one moment before. I’m afraid this will only increase the circulation of bad words and bad arguments among the supporters of civil rights.
Englaro’s murder, whether through dehydraton or other means, is clearly apparent. Please work to enusre that no more so-called “families” and “journalists” take it upon themselves to kill another innocent person they perceive as disabled.
Marcello,
First, I’m not sure how the “wrongful death” tag ended up on this post. It wasn’t something I did intentionally. The tags get selected through a point-and-click system and sometimes I make a mistake without catching it. I took that tag off.
I don’t know enough about Italian law to weigh the ins and outs of how this jives with law and custom there and have tried to stick to simply reporting it.
Having said that, I have to say that your final comments are disappointing. You essentially blame any future use of bad terminology by people you agree with on people you disagree with.
That’s the logic used by alleged “pro-lifers” who had no harsh words – let alone condemnation – for people who bombed or shot at medical facilities that provide abortion – and even committed murder.
We are all responsible for our own behavior. –Stephen Drake
Stephen,
perhaps I was really off-balance in my comments, but allow me to add some clarifications.
I think it’s more or less an objective fact that, when attitudes become polarized, those views that do not conform to one or the other of the opposite sides are virtually silenced. You end up with more bad arguments, while the issues that would require careful and balanced consideration are set aside.
I didn’t mean to justify bad arguments, and I don’t like people using words that are, first of all, inaccurate, and often offensive. Honestly, I don’t feel I would agree with these people on anything important except for a few basic principles about the separation of State and Church. Besides, I’m sure they too are taking advantage from the polarization of attitudes and I don’t like the idea that they will receive more public attention because of it.
But I still think that it would be absurd to blame them first. What happened in Italy is that the Vatican’s secretary of state had a phone call with Berlusconi, asking him to pass a law as soon as possible, nullifying the previous court decisions and bypassing the parliamentary debate. The prime minister took this as a further opportunity to attack the Italian president and the constitution. That is a serious source of concern, beyond the Englaro case.
In the end, however, you are right on what is probably the essential: I am unequal in the strength of my condemnation of the two polarized sides. That’s because it is much easier for me to see the violation of principles or rights that I know better. Believe it or not, when I visit your blog I’m in a spirit of learning, about issues I’m still struggling with.
Have been pondering this:moving Eluana Englaro out of a hospital that requires care (why they do is not the issue) to a hospital where it was ok to starve, i.e. kill her, is a deliberate act to get around the “rules” while debate was ongoing. Process counts.