Some of the most interesting religious news doesn’t appear in the religious media. Had the political,left of centre,Mother Jones,not crossed my desk last week, I would have missed,”The Purpose Driven Wife”,(Kathryn Joyce, 5.3.09), a most enlightening critique of “biblical womanhood”.

However, it was the recent issue of The Economist,(19.3.09),which caused this three score years and ten writer, to stop and think. Prospects of death and dying, are beginning to have a higher priority than “biblical womanhood”!

Tucked away in the Science and Technology section, was a brief article, “But not yet,Lord:Religious people seem curiously reluctant to meet their maker”. According to this report, ” You might expect the religious to accept death as God’s will, and while not hurrying towards it,not to seek to prolong their lives using heroic and often traumatic medical procedures. Atheists,by contrast,have nothing to look forward to after death,so they might be expected to cling to life”.

In fact,according to the researchers,”Religious people seem to use their faith to cope with the pain and degradation that ‘aggressive’ medical treatment entails,even though such treatment rarely makes such odds”.

The Economist was reporting on a recent study,”Religious Coping and Use of Intensive Life-Prolonging Care Near Death in Patients With Advanced Cancer”.(Journal of the American Medical Association,Vol.301 No.11,March 18,2009). According to Holly Prigerson, the study’s senior author, “There’s a sense that by not going for life-prolonging care,they’re letting God down. But the more aggressive care you get,the worse your quality of life in that last week”. (Los Angeles Times,18 March 2009)

The study is a part of a comprehensive research project,Coping with Cancer Study being conducted by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.Other findings of the project research include:

a.Those who used ‘positive’ religious coping-such as those ‘seeking God’s love and care’, made fewer preparations for death such as writing ‘living wills’ or giving someone power of attorney. (http://cancerology.blogspot.com/ 24.3.09)

b.Nearly fifty percent of patients with advanced cancer,reported,”unmet spiritual needs by religious communities and seventy two percent reported unmet spiritual needs by the healthcare system”.( “Meeting Spiritual Needs:What Is an Oncologist to Do?”,Journal of Clinical Oncology,Vol 25,No 5 2007)

c.Advanced cancer patients,”who have end-of-life discussions with their doctors appear to have better quality of life in their final days and pay significantly less for that care”. (American Cancer Society,ACS News Center,10.3.09)

The Australian media recently,has reported on two cases, directly related to this research. First,there was, “a retired palliative care nurse,who executed a secret plan to take her life”. (“Police investigate Angie’s lonely death”, The Age 26.3.09), and the beginning of the trial of Doctor Balaji Rao, who treated Bob Cowling in his last days.(“Humane and ethical way to treat death is not always the legal way”,SMH.28.3.09)

Both raise significant moral,ethical and religious issues. However,it is Peter Saul,a senior intensive care specialist and director of a clinical unit in ethics and health law,who confronts a harsher reality. He writes,”In terms of health costs,our final year of life is the most expensive.Almost all of this expense is in the last few weeks. Dying in an ICU costs more than most of us have ever paid in contributions to the Medicare levy.Nor is it a particularly pleasant experience.Evidence suggests that as many as half the people admitted to an ICU at the end of life would have chosen otherwise had they been given the choice”.( “We need to talk of death in our perfect health storm”,SMH.30.3.09)

Half a dozen paragraphs in a journal devoted to the markets and the economy have opened up a whole range of ethical and faith issues and questions which will keep me going for another decade or so.

Alan Matheson