العروة الوثقى الزيدية - موقع إسلامي يهدف لتعريف الزائر بفكر وتراث المسلمين الزيدية

The Question

Question: If there is a patient in the hospital who has completely lost consciousness, does not move, is being nourished by feeding solutions, and is breathing through a medical machine, and the physicians supervising him say that if they remove from him the breathing machine he will certainly die – what is the ruling on removing the machine and leaving (only) the nutritive feeds until he dies?

The Answer

The answer – and Allah is the One who grants success – is that if the physicians have lost all hope in his recovery and no longer have any expectation of his being cured, then it is permissible for them to remove from him the breathing machine and to cut off from him the nutritive feeds, because there is at that point no benefit in that, and no interest in prolonging his life, neither for him nor for his family.
It has been narrated in the biography of Imām Zayd ibn ʿAlī (Peace be upon them) that when he was struck in battle by an arrow in his forehead, a physician was called for him. When the physician looked at the arrow, he said to Imām Zayd: “If I pull the arrow out of you, you will die.” So Imām said: “Remove it, for death is better than what I am in of pain.” This is the sense of his words, and in it is what supports and bears witness to what we have mentioned.

Source: Min Thimār al-ʿIlm wa al-Ḥikmah vol.2