Op-Ed: Preserving Life?

December 4, 2007

Last year, the Italian poet Piergiorgio Welby announced at a press conference that after battling muscular dystrophy for four decades, he would discontinue his ventilator as an act of “euthanasia.” While the ventilator was being stopped, he received large doses of morphine, which could have been independently lethal rather than simply pain-relieving. Welby was a leader of the euthanasia movement in Italy. He seemed to be trying deliberately to blur distinctions and to provoke controversy. (Commonweal)