of the Prof. Roberto de Mattei

Marina Ripa di Meana, the provocative exponent of the Italian jet set who died in Rome on 6 January 2018, he chose deep palliative sedation to die, expressing his last wishes in a video testament: «After Christmas my health conditions took a nosedive. The breath, the word, eating, get up: All, at this point, it's difficult for me, It causes me unbearable pain: the tumor has now taken over my body. But not of my mind, of my conscience. I called Maria Antonietta Farina Coscioni, person I trust and respect for his personal story, to tell her that the moment of the end has truly come. I asked her to talk to her, she came. I expressed to her the idea of ​​assisted suicide in Switzerland. She told me that I could follow the Italian path of palliative care with deep sedation. I who have traveled with my mind and body all my life, I didn't know, I didn't know this way. I want to send this message to say that even at home, or in hospital, with a tumor, a person must know that he can choose to return to the land without further and unnecessary suffering. Let it be known. Let it be known».

The choice of deep sedation was therefore suggested to Marina Ripa di Meana and Maria Antonietta Coscioni, a left-wing parliamentarian, founder of the Luca Coscioni Institute, who has been fighting for years foreuthanasia and the assisted suicide. Between the two forms of end of life, Coscioni herself stated, in an interview with the Republic, exists "a precise discriminant». In deep sedation «you do not administer a drug that leads to death in a specific time, which in assisted suicide can be timed. The deep sedation time, Instead, It depends on the patient's condition, who spends his last hours in a deep sleep».

The statement of Maria Antonietta Coscioni insinuates that the drug administered to the patient leads to death, even if not in a precise and timed time. This would be a disguised form of assisted suicide, admitted by the "living will" legalized in Italy at the end of December, according to which every adult person, capable of understanding and wanting, can manifest, through advance treatment orders (THAT), your treatment preferences, including the rejection of artificial nutrition and hydration.

Actually, observe the prof. Renzo Puccetti, Deep sedation is an unscientific term and in the medical field one should rather distinguish between one palliative sedation and one euthanasia sedation. The prima it is admitted by Catholic morality, because it is not aimed at suppressing the patient, but the pain. The second causes the death of the patient, or directly, through sedative drugs, or through the interruption of life support (The new daily compass, 8 January 2018). There is therefore a profound ambiguity in this concept which makes the problem less simple than it may appear.

First it must be clarified that the sedation we are talking about is not a temporary therapy to relieve pain, but a permanent condition, of no return, which resembles that of an irreversible coma. Whoever chooses deep sedation performs an act by which he chooses to irrevocably turn off the light of reason and will, to immerse yourself in a deep and definitive sleep, which is difficult to distinguish from death.

But if it is not lawful to take your own life, sarà lecito rinunciare deliberatamente all’esercizio delle facoltà dell’anima, che rappresentano un immenso bene ricevuto da Dio?

In Italy, il National Bioethics Committee (CNB), in un documento approvato il 29 January 2016, from the title Sedazione palliativa profonda continua nell’imminenza della morte, afferma la liceità della sedazione profonda, why this, a differenza dell’eutanasia, non può essere ritenuta un atto finalizzato alla morte. Ma lo stesso comitato ha decretato che lo standard neurologico è clinicamente ed eticamente valido per accertare la morte dell’individuo (I criteri di accertamento della morte, 24 June 2010), ovvero che la morte coincide con uno stato di coma irreversibile analogo a quello prodotto dalla sedazione profonda e permanente.

L’evidente ipocrisia è stata messa in luce da un membro dissidente dello stesso Comitato, il Dr. Carlo Flamigni:

«Well, if I am a sick person suffering the pain of hell due to an illness for which I have no hope of recovery, if I know that these punishments will continue, interspersed with more or less long periods of unconsciousness, if I fall asleep, whenever morphine exerts its temporary effect, terrified by the idea that I will wake up torn apart by my suffering; well, if someone suggests to me the possibility of continuous deep palliative sedation and proposes it to me, what I understand is that I am offered the opportunity to choose a good death and I accept it happily, if anything, amazed by the fact that the country has finally legalized euthanasia». Similar considerations were made on the occasion of the death of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, which, as his niece Giulia remembers, he asked to be sedated. «You were afraid, fear above all of losing control of your body, to die of suffocation (…). With the shared awareness that the moment was approaching, when you can't take it anymore, you asked to be put to sleep. So a doctor with two clear and clear eyes, an expert in treatments that accompany death, he sedated you» (Corriere della Sera, 4 September 2012). Paolo Flores d’Arcais, are The Daily Fact of the 6 September 2012, thus he commented on the episode: «Carlo Maria Martini has decided, decided freely and sovereignly, the moment he wanted to permanently lose consciousness, no longer "live" one's agony and one's death. This and nothing else, Indeed, it means to be sedated. Don't feel anything anymore, don't try anything anymore, being “physically unconscious” (…). Already be, subjectively, in eternal sleep, in eternal rest, in the irreversible end of all suffering and all anguish». Eugenio Scalfari observed for his part: «When you are in the state of health he was in, sedation is a euphemism that simply means killing yourself after a few hours without excessive pain. Between voluntary sedation and detachment from machines, in substance, there is no difference» (The Republic, 26 September 2012).

If the transplant industry thrives on the neurological standard of "brain death"., in the hospice of palliative care, especially in the United States, the euthanasia and assisted suicide industry is thriving. Elizabeth Wickam , in a documented study, he showed the support given by Project on Death in America (PDIA) di George Soros allo sviluppo delle cure palliative per renderle un efficace strumento della cultura della morte.

First xii ha dato delle chiare indicazioni morali sulla sedazione, o narcosi (Risposta a 3 quesiti posti dalla società italiana di anestesiologia, of the 24 February 1957), confermate dalla Congregazione per la Dottrina della fede (Dichiarazione sull’eutanasia, of the 5 maggio 1980 par. III), ma non bisogna nascondersi dietro il velo dell’ipocrisia. La verità è che le cure palliative oggi vengono usate come veicolo per l’eutanasia, soprattutto nei paesi dove essa non è legalizzata, con il pretesto di alleviare la sofferenza del malato. The Dr. Philippe Schepens, from the John-Paul II Academy for Human Life and Family, lo ricorda con queste parole: «dire che una persona deve essere messa in uno stato di incoscienza, because his pain cannot be borne in any other way, is false in light of current medical advances. This type of "total sedation" not only deprives the person of their right to be aware and in control of their end of life, but it is above all aimed at making it acceptable to relatives, from this moment on, deprivation of nutrition and hydration. This opens the way to euthanasia».

Catholic hospital orders have alleviated the suffering of humanity over the centuries, but in hospitals, called the "Incurables", the dominant concern of the religious men and women who cared for the sick, was to prepare them spiritually for death. In the hospice contemporaries, often similar to wellness centers for the dying, the supreme concern is to "not make them suffer", forgetting the expiatory and redemptive value of suffering, which is not an infringement of human dignity, but the ineliminable consequence of original sin. There is no greater dignity than that of the man who faces the suffering of death with courage and patience, in the image of Our Lord who, as the Gospel narrates, after having tasted the wine mixed with gall that was offered to him before the crucifixion to alleviate his suffering, he didn't want to drink it (cfr. Mt 27, 34), because he wanted to suffer in full consciousness, thus fulfilling what he had said to Peter at the time of his arrest: «I will not drink the cup that my Father has prepared for me?» (Gv 18, 11).