Medical efforts are not neatly divisible into heroic vs. non-heroic. Hope is a statistical probability in medicine which is almost never a zero. Hope to a Christian is never a probability and always 100 percent.
The use of complex machines or dangerous surgery highlight the issue but simpler measures are often where we need discernment. On occasions I have seen a $3.00 plastic IV tube transformed into cruel punishment of the dying.
It is true that there is no such thing as a life not worthy to be lived. It is equally true that there are treatments not worthy to be inflicted.
Excerpt from a letter to The Presbyterian Journal, August 18, 1982
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