041374 'Father O'Donnell Speaks On 'Dynamics Of Dying'

"Death and the Dynamics of Dying" was the topic of guest speaker Father Thomas J. O'Donnell addressing members of the N.C. State Nurses Association, District 14, at their meeting Tuesday night.

Father O'Donnell, pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Clinton, was graduated from Georgetown University and was the Re. gent Dean of Students and Professor of Medical Ethics at the Georgetown Medical School for ten years. He is a consultant to the American Medical Association and to the Catholic Hospital Association. His book "Morals in Medicine" has been translated into Italian, French and Spanish. He is a noted lecturer and world traveler, having just returned from a trip to Rome.

In his speech, Father O'Donnell differentiated the three categories of the right to kill, the right to die, and the right to be dead. This third right has sometimes been under discussion in the newer concepts of transplants where a clinically dead body is kept electrically alive to be the container for parts which will be used, while a transplant is being made ready.

Father O'Donnell discussed the moral obligation to use relatively ordinary means of keeping a person who is terminally ill alive, but not an obligation to use extraordinary means. When a person is able to make this decision for himself, it should be honored, and when he is not able, the physician and the person closest to the patient should make the decision, Father O'Donnell said.

The Nurses Association met in the Sampson C o u n t y Memorial Hospital cafeteria, hosted by the Clinton nurses. Joy Hogg presided at the meeting.