A recent article raised the issue of whether cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is currently being performed in the most effective manner.¹ According to the article, many of the skills that are carefully taught in CPR classes are neglected in the stress of an actual real-life emergency. Certainly, everyone hopes that an awareness of the problem and new monitoring techniques will improve patient care. There are, however, several other aspects of CPR where ethical concerns are not adequately addressed.

In a Japanese study from the Journal of Clinical Oncology, it was reported that 25% of terminal cancer patients experienced significant depression during their illness, due to multiple factors.¹  Such findings prompt us to consider the ethical obligations of Christians to terminally ill patients, especially those experiencing depression.

With a scarce, non-renewable resource such as livers for transplantation, shouldn’t the individuals who receive organs be the persons who need them most? If recipients could be selected based on need, allocation finally could be divorced from onerous criteria such as social value. Since need in this context can be equated with death (if life-saving treatment is withheld), the manner in which recipients are chosen becomes paramount. On an existential level, the question may be reduced simply to choosing who should live when not all can.

Someone has observed that when a revolutionary group wishes to wage war on what Christians hold to be sacred, the first--and most effective--strategy is to co-opt language in the service of the cause. It is therefore not surprising that proponents of physician-assisted death routinely speak in terms of "compassion" and human "dignity." As they seek to expand their agenda both on a popular level and in the context of policy debates, the rhetoric of compassion allows them to capture the moral high ground.