Let me preface this post with this: None of these issues are easy, and I in know way mean to suggest they are. It’s heartbreaking, needless to say, to watch someone suffer, especially someone young, or especially someone in the twilight of their lives–in both cases, people who might not be able to even verbally express their pain.

But…killing infants? And where is the line drawn on what kind of “life of suffering” is too much?

Here’s an e-mail from one doctor (and I’m very interested in hearing from others):

Let me also point out that I have yet to see a patient — ever — with truly untreatable pain. There are other symptoms that can be very refractory to treatment, particularly nausea or depression, but pain is *easy*. The difficulty comes when the dose of medication required to treat pain produces enough depression of respiration to endanger the patient’s breathing. That’s where the “doctrine of double effect” comes in — the idea that a dose of (for example) morphine that hastens a patient’s death is not euthanasia and hence ethically acceptable if it truly is the lowest dose required to make the patient comfortable. It’s the intent of the prescriber that matters, not the effect on the patient. While this can be difficult in the sense of trying to evaluate someone’s conduct afterward, I’ve never had any difficulty in knowing the difference between increasing the dose of a pain medication because the patient still hurts (even though I know I’m taking greater risks with his breathing, risks that are acceptable to him because of limited prognosis) on the one hand, and prescribing something with the intent of ending someone’s life (which I’ve never done). The idea of killing an infant because I in all my wisdom think that his life is not worth living is repugnant.