Duc in Altum

I caught a piece on NPR in which a hospital chaplin tells how she convinced a cancer patient to de facto sign a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order by noting to the patient how some hospitals refer to the order as Allow Natural Death (AND). Obviously, in principal, the idea of allowing a natural death is appropriate and moral. However, in the wake of the euthanasia movement's celebrated murder of Ms. Terri Schiavo, it is clear that an AND, if it is not already, will become a vehicle for putting people to death in the name of respecting the person's wishes. The piece made me sick because, the chaplin was called in to get the man to sign the paper after other hospital personnel had failed. It seems that they were just trying to wear the man down. She was successful because she gave the reality another name. This is very much the echoes of the Schiavo case where somehow thousands, if not millions of people, became convinced that dehydrating someone to death was respecting the wishes of someone who allegedly would not like to live as she did. Fr. Pavone put it very clearly when he indicated that Ms. Schiavo was murdered.