A doctor alleged Wednesday that Pope John Paul II violated Catholic teaching against euthanasia by refusing medical care that would have kept him alive longer — a charge immediately dismissed by Vatican officials.
In an article in the Italian journal Micromega, Dr. Lina Pavanelli, an anaesthesiologist, questioned why John Paul was only outfitted with a nasal feeding tube on March 30, 2005, three days before he died. She said he clearly was in need of artificial nutrition well before then.
John Paul was rushed to Rome's Gemelli Polyclinic hospital two times in February 2005 with breathing crises related to his Parkinson's disease; he was released for the last time March 13. He died in his Vatican apartment on April 2, from what the Vatican said was septic shock and cardiocirculatory collapse.
The Vatican announced March 30 that John Paul had been outfitted with a nasal feeding straw to improve his nutrition so he could recover strength.
However, Vatican officials said Wednesday that the tube had actually been inserted well before March 30 but that the procedure was only announced on that date — casting doubt on Pavanelli's core argument. They disclosed the information in response to Pavanelli's charges, which they said weren't serious because she had no access to the medical records and based her accusations only on press releases and news reports.
At a news conference Wednesday, Pavanelli acknowledged she didn't have access to John Paul's medical records and acknowledged the likelihood that he may have been outfitted sooner than March 30 with a nasal feeding tube.
But she maintained her main argument that he was not given adequate nutrition soon enough. Confronted with evidence that the nasal tube had been inserted sooner, she then changed her core accusation, charging that John Paul should have been given a stomach feeding tube, since it has been proven to be more effective for longer periods of time.
This woman obviously has an agenda.
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TIME is doing another hit job on the Catholic Church.
Recently, TIME drooled over a book that depicts Mother Teresa's faith and doubts.
Now, the topic is Pope John Paul II's death.
In a provocative article, an Italian medical professor argues that Pope John Paul II didn't just simply slip away as his weakness and illness overtook him in April 2005. Intensive care specialist Dr. Lina Pavanelli has concluded that the ailing Pope's April 2 death was caused by what the Catholic Church itself would consider euthanasia. She bases this conclusion on her medical expertise and her own observations of the ailing pontiff on television, as well as press reports and a subsequent book by John Paul's personal physician. The failure to insert a feeding tube into the patient until just a few days before he died accelerated John Paul's death, Pavanelli concludes. Moreover, Pavanelli says she believes that the Pope's doctors dutifully explained the situation to him, and thus she surmises that it was the pontiff himself who likely refused the feeding tube after he'd been twice rushed to the hospital in February and March. Catholics are enjoined to pursue all means to prolong life.
The article, entitled "The Sweet Death of Karol Wojtyla" (using the Pope's birth name) appears in the latest edition of Micromega, a highbrow Italian bi-monthly that has frequently criticized the Vatican's stance on bioethics. The author, who heads the anesthesiology and intensive care therapy school at the University of Ferrara, says she decided to revisit the events around John Paul's death after the Vatican took a hard line in a controversy last year in Italy over euthanasia. Indeed her accusations are grave, questioning the Catholic Church's strictly traditional stances on medical ethics, including the dictum from John Paul's own 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae to use all modern means possible to avoid death.
Recalling the Vatican's medical reports during John Paul's last days, Pavanelli writes: "I'm surprised that I myself failed to critically examine the information. I let my perceptions conform to the hope of recovery and the official version, without confronting the clinical signs that I was seeing." While the Vatican had expressed most of its concern about breathing difficulty, which was alleviated with a tracheotomy, Pavanelli says a readily apparent loss of weight, and an apparent difficulty to swallow, was not being addressed. "The patient had died for reasons that were clearly not mentioned. Of all the problems of the complicated clinical picture of the patient, the acute respiratory insufficiency was not the principal threat to the life of the patient. The Pope was dying from another consequence of the effects on the [throat] muscles from his Parkinson's Disease... not treated: the incapacity to swallow."
The Vatican quickly fired back this week. John Paul's longtime doctor Renato Buzzonetti, who now monitors Pope Benedict XVI, said that doctors and John Paul himself all acted to stave off death. "His treatment was never interrupted," Buzzonetti told the Rome daily La Repubblica. "Anyone who says otherwise is mistaken." He added that a permanent nasal feeding tube was inserted three days before the Pope's death when he could no longer sufficiently ingest food or liquids. Buzzonetti did not specifically respond to Pavanelli's claim that John Paul needed a tube weeks, not days, before he eventually died.
Note to self: Cancel subscription to TIME.
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