update

The surgeons came up with a new chemical compound that's supposed to neutralize the acid in his stomach. It's apparently difficult to implement the compound in reality, and since it was just invented, who even knows if it works.

It all leads to some devastatingly hard questions.

For example:

One of my relatives has suggested just removing the entire tube and sewing up the hole. No more spilled gastric acid, yes, but he would starve to death.

On the other hand, arguably without functional gastric acid he still would starve to death, being unable to digest food.

If the whole thing is just to reduce his pain, which is less painful: starving to death, or having your flesh burnt through to the guts with hydrochloric acid?

I read Ann Coulter's latest the other day, and mostly loved it, but she brought up the case of Terry Schiavo. It's been a while, hasn't it? But in my bioethics class we talked about it. When is it all right to let a person die? Is letting a person die the same as killing them? Did that guy kill Terry when he unhooked her from life support? Or did he just let her die? Is he held accountable for murder?

It's kind of like my brother. We have a DNR on him: is it wrong? Is it right? What if we never had installed the tube? The tube is basically a form of life support. What is it that makes dying by starvation bad but dying by acid burning your guts out not bad? What made it okay for my parents to get that G-tube installed but makes it not okay to put him on oxygen if he stops breathing? What is it that made it okay for us to surgically prevent his rectum from puncturing his lungs, but makes it not okay for us to restart his heart if it stops beating?

What is this?