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Pope John Paul II said Saturday that the removal of feeding tubes from patients in vegetative states was immoral, and that no judgment on their quality of life could justify such “euthanasia by omission.”
The pope made the comments to participants of a Vatican conference on the ethical dilemmas of dealing with incapacitated patients, entering into a debate that has sparked court battles in the United States and elsewhere.
The pope said that even the medical terminology used to describe people in so-called persistent vegetative states was degrading to them. He said that no matter how sick a person is, “he is and will always be a man, never becoming a `vegetable’ or `animal.”‘
