POLST Orders Require Careful Scrutiny
by Gerald D. Coleman, S.S.
Vice President, Corporate Ethics, Daughters of Charity Health System

Lisa Gasbarre Black is General Counsel to Catholic Charities Health and Human Services in the Diocese of Cleveland. In the recent edition of Ethics and Medics published by the National Catholic Bioethics Center, Black is highly critical of Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) that went into effect on January 1, 2009 in California (and at varied times in other States).

Black advises that POLST forms "should be used only with great care." Since POLST forms are commonly used in Catholic Health Care Institutions, we should be mindful of Black's hesitancies about their use.

Her major concern centers on her belief that "POLST theory seeks to elevate patient autonomy to the level of an enforceable, legal right." Black fears that POLST too easily translates a person's end-of-life medical wishes into "an immediately actionable medical order." She concludes, "...the POLST movement is a national effort to manage and control death under the guise of compassion."

By Rev. Richard Benson, C.M.

Does an embryo have a soul? Isn't society justified in putting to death a criminal that has committed a capital crime? Why should taxpayers have to support health care and schooling for undocumented children? Why didn't Pope John Paul II agree to call President Bush's invasion of Iraq a "just war"? When did health care become a "right"?

All of these apparently unconnected questions actually involve the same central Catholic moral principle, the consistent ethic of life. This principle is often associated with Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s 1983 proposal of the “seamless garment” analogy, a reference from John 19:23 to the seamless robe of Jesus, to provide a moral compass to help Catholics apply moral principles to life issues present in the public square.

Cardinal Bernardin suggested that a consistent ethic of life might be the most effective approach in addressing issues dealing with human life and dignity in a modern society more and more identified with the “culture of death.” His seamless garment approach suggests that all life issues such as abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, social injustice, racism, prejudice, poverty, unjust war and economic injustice are most effectively confronted when done so with a consistent application of moral principles that are firmly founded on the intrinsic value of human life.

On Sunday, January 3rd, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article entitled "Catholic decree on comatose patients." The writer relied heavily on the website opinions of Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, a leading advocate of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. The Chronicle article and the Lee blogs have received a good deal of national attention.

These writers are addressing the 2009 revisions to Part Five and Directive 58 of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs). The last revision of these Directives was made in 2001. At that time, the Vatican had not addressed the morality of providing medically-assisted nutrition and hydration (MANH) to patients in a vegetative state (PVS).

Commentary by Carol Hogan

During 2004 Californians were promised “cures” for all kinds of chronic illnesses and debilitating injuries if Proposition 71 became law.  Believing the hype, voters passed the initiative—a constitutional amendment that indebted the state for $3 billion ($6 billion with interest), guaranteed scientists the right to do stem cell research, incentivized embryo-destructive stem cell research, and excluded the oversight of the Legislature and/or the Governor.

Click here for Downloadable PDF Brochure in English or Spanish

What is an embryo?

An embryo is the earliest form of human life.  Naturally, an embryo is created when sperm and egg meet and unite within a woman’s body.  In the 1970s scientists perfected the technique of fertilizing a woman’s egg with selected sperm in the laboratory (in vitro fertilization—IVF), and then implanting the resulting embryo into a woman’s uterus.   The first child born of this procedure was Louise Brown in 1978.  Since then, thousand of children have been so conceived and born.  In addition, thousands of embryos artificially produced have been held in frozen suspension.  These embryos have been referred to as “spare” and have been sought by scientists for purposes of experimentation.