Plato on Medicine's Role in Society: The Care of the Elderly
Plato was the teacher of Aristotle, as well as an important source for the early Christian thinkers including Augustine. Thomas Aquinas continued to draw on the wisdom of Plato as well as Aristotle. Perhaps by trying to understand how Plato might have dealt with a modern moral problem, we might gain that perspective which often comes with standing back and looking through the eyes of someone less closely involved. O'Rourke and Brodeur identify as a "serious problem in medical ethics" that "health care professionals often must decide when to allow a person to die."· Let us try to examine this question through the gaze of Plato. 2 On Monday, Oct. 6,1986, there was an article on the editorial page of the New York Times by Alvin Feinstein, Professor of Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine, about a 96-year old woman. She was treated for pneumonia following a stroke and survived. Feinstein describes her, at that time, as in "the agony of her vegetation". He identifies the decision to treat her vigorously, which was made by the doctors, as one which would "benefit no one except their own satisfaction in thwarting death, regardless of the consequences". As Feinstein ends, he asks, "Why?", and weeps both for the woman, his mother, and the profession, also his own. Plato, and Feinstein, I suspect, would have made one identical decision. Neither would have treated her pneumonia. I also suspect Feinstein would have performed one further act, however. He would have held her handnot as physician, but as loving son. The reasons that neither Feinstein nor Plato would not have treated her would also probably at least in part -be different. Feinstein, in his article, seems to base his agony about the treatment on compassion as well as autonomy and a recognition ofIimits . He writes of his mother's values and her clearly expressed wishes. She had