At a meeting of the World Medical Association (WMA) held in the Vatican, the Pope reaffirmed that euthanasia “is always wrong in that euthanasia ends life and causes death“.
He deemed as “positive” all of the “medical advances to prolong life and eradicate numerous diseases”. He warned against “the temptation to insist on treatments that have powerful effects on the body, yet at times do not serve the integral good of the person“. “It is morally legal,” added the Holy Father, “to renounce treatments or stop them when their use is not in keeping with ethical and humanist standards”.
The Pope took the opportunity to “underline the growing inequality regarding access to state-of-the-art, expensive treatments by ever more limited and privileged segments of the population”.
Although the vision of the WMA “resembles that of the Church” in that it “considers euthanasia (performed by a doctor) and assisted suicide (carried out by a patient) to be contrary to medical ethics)”, two national medical associations in the Netherlands and Canada nevertheless want “this comment to be deleted“.
AFP (16/11/2017) ; Reuters, Gerard O’Connell (16/11/2017) ;