PRAY FOR TERRI SCHIAVO
POSTED BY: Conscience
UPDATED: Sunday, June 19, 2005 02:31
VIEWED: 17528
PAGE 9 of 11
RUE:
"Same as your lame excuses for why it's OK for government to kill innocent life. We didn't kill children, we just dropped a 500lb bomb next to a school. We didn't execute innocent people, we just didn't review DNA evidence (Roughly 10% of all people on death row are provably innocent). We didn't kill poor patients, we just legalized it.
It's that incredibly twisted rationalizing that makes you and your cohorts look - .... you fill in the blank."
FINN:
"Maybe it was the expressed wishes of all those people to die."
Finn, if this is all you had to say on the topic, you just conceded the argument. And, you made yourself look like a callous moron to boot, completely de-legitimizing your stance as the compassionate one. Way to go, dude!
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SignyM:
Quote:
I have a somewhat different take. I'm not sure its exactly stereotyping (although there is some of that going in too). What I see going on is a tremendous- and I mean TREMENDOUS- amount of projection. Because the press has not bothered to show any of the OTHER 473 million seconds of Terri's life to dispute our projections, we are free to imagine Terri however we want. If Terri has actually recovered, she would not have been as appealing as Terri the victim, who could be the canvas of our hopes and fears.
That's what I meant by "interesting and disturbing" - it's not particularly the perceived sexism (although my perception of sexism is involved; I'm female, it basically has to be), but the psychological factors that cause such projection.
Which are disturbing to me, as they seem to be an expression of a tendency to eliminate the individual, actual, live, living people from the equation, inserting some sort of idealized fantasy of what a human - most likely Christian - being should be.
Other than that, personally I have no idea what Ms. Schiavo would've been like, and no real opinion on that matter.
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In many ways, the same thing happens in the anti-abortion crowd. The embryo is the ideal child: undemanding, full of potential, who NEVER disappoints. The fact that it is helpless and silent allows it to become the ideal canvas for our fantasies. If you think this isn't true, just watch what happens to attitude once the child is born: Reality sets in and suddenly it's just another mouth to feed.
Um....see my comment above.
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There may be SOME sexism at work here. It's probably not as conventional to project onto a male because we simply don't accept them as being helpless. In fact, it would be an appropriate study for the medical community to determine whether more men than women are removed from various forms of life support, more old than young, more blacks than whites etc. It would reveal our prejudicial responses by exposing its influence on our perceptions of essentially equivalent medical diagnoses.
I'd be very interested in seeing a study like that. It was one of the questions I had (unexpressed as that question was) about what SoupCatcher had quoted.
Another good question/study to do, would be to see how many of the "life culture" promoters have faced a similar choice among their family members, and what did they end up choosing. Because I really think - especially given that DeLay (I think) has made a similar choice (in consensus with other family members) as Mr. Schiavo, for his own father - that the divide is really not that great, except as it applies to this controversy surrounding Ms. Schiavo.
I could be wrong, of course.
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BTW, I'm sick of people driving themselves into hysteria over this one case. Blinkin' idiots, all of them.
Yuh-huh. I'm not hysterical, just morbidly curious. I swear.
"He has a gorm horizon. All gorm that falls past it is lost forever." UserFriendly http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050114
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"It's about pretty white people and the media likes to show that... Same reason why of all of the spouses murdered with unborn babies in them and Lacy Peterson / Scott Peterson is the case being shown. Same reason why Jon Benet Ramsey gets airtime..."
If someone had told me two weeks ago that Jasonzz and I would agree on something, I would have told them they were taking some pretty good drugs. But the impossible happened. I'm still in shock.
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Why does it seem that those who most fervently believe in a kind and just God with the promise of life everlasting after death are the loudest in keeping the dying/dead on machines?
Do these people believe that torturing the sick and dying by stretching out the dying process is doing Gods will?
Surely human intervention is trying to prevent God from calling them home. Oh OK it is a MYSTERY (yes it has to be in CAPS as it can’t be answered or have to make sense because it is religion).
With deep sorrow for Terri, her husband, family, and all those in similar circumstances.
With deepest contempt for those people and politicians who tried to butt in. May they have a slow and painful departure from this world to allow them to have a chance to enjoy what they would force on others.
Gwynethh
Are You Asking me to Dance?
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This post is tied to a post by Signym, but that was just a convenient entry point. These thoughts are really directed at everyone.
The discussion on this thread is focused on Terry Schiavo’s specific case. This is understandable since the thread was initiated as a plea for prayer for her. But, it seems to me that if the discussion is to focus on the bioethics of the situation (as it seems to have evolved to be), then Terry needs to be dropped out of the picture for a while. The framework and guidelines for handling “right to die” situations needs to be defined first. Then specific cases can be interpreted within that framework.
With that in mind, I see two dimensions to the general debate: ethical and legal. They are interrelated. But they are not the same…
I think that the ethical issues should be resolved first… they drive the legal issues. For me, the ethical issues seem to be most focused on the morality of ending the life. While the debate over who should be able to end it is also an ethical parameter, it seems to be more firmly rooted in legal considerations.
Ethical issues
1) Is it acceptable to end life for medical reasons under any circumstances?
2) If yes, then what conditions constitute acceptable circumstances (brain death, persistent vegetative state, severe handicap, simple desire of the patient)?
3) Again, if the answer is that life can be ended for medical reasons, then what constitutes acceptable techniques for ending life (“active” euthanasia vice “passive” withholding of of care)?
4) If passive techniques are acceptable (i.e. “withholding support of life”), what constitutes acceptable types of support to withhold (heart stimulation, breathing stimulation, food/water)?
If the answer to the primary ethical question is “no, it is not acceptable to end life for medical reasons,” then the legal issues are very straightforward… anyone who does end life for those reasons has committed murder and should be prosecuted. If the answer is “yes,” then the legal issues become more complex.
Legal issues (assuming it is acceptable to end life for medical reasons)
1) Who should be empowered to decide to end a life and in what order of precedence?
2) If only the patient can make the choice, then what record of that choice is required (written, direct verbal, indirect verbal attested by other than patient)?
3) If only the patient can authorize it, what is to be done if no clear authorization exists?
4) If it can be authorized (or the patient's authorization attested to) by other than the patient, then in what order of precedence?
The answers for some of the questions above may be multivalent… i.e., one set of answers for brain dead patients, another set of answers for cognitive, but severely handicapped patients, etc.
I suppose the point of this rambling post is that whether you fully agree with my definition of the “layers” of this issue as laid out above, the fact is that it IS a layered issue. And the discussion, to be productive, needs to start at the top layer and drill down. If everyone jumps in somewhere in the middle or near the bottom, and then compounds the error by applying all of their unstated assumptions to a specific case (for which all the evidence is not fully and indisputably available), then we end up with people screaming at each other…
“The elephant is like a snake!”
“No, the elephant is like a tree trunk!”
“Shut the f*ck up!”
“F*cknuts!”
Where is the utility in that?
[EDITED to correct typos]
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Not a response.
I've been thinking about the Pope. As I write this he is said to be dying. By the time I finish, he may already be dead.
There are parallels with Mrs Schiavo regarding the ending of life-sustaining care, but there are differences.
The Pope was (and at this point is reported to still be) mentally intact though failing of body. Comprehensive medical treatment might realistically preserve his life for some indefinite time longer, and withholding care will kill him - a person who is unmistakably alive and present. Mrs Schiavo, on the other hand, had a healthy body but a brain so badly damaged by most estimations she was no longer there.
The Pope opted to not go to hospital where respirators, catheters, modern drug therapy (to support cardiac function), IVs and feeding tubes, and constant monitoring might have helped him through this crisis. He has a feeding tube and breathing tube, and antibiotics. But he is without standard medical care that would be routinely performed under other circumstances (car accident). The Pope's circumstances make all the difference in the care that was selected.
In hospital, the other possibility is that he could have ended up permanently on a respirator, mentally alive but physically on life-support.
It is clear he chose death over a degraded life.
Is that suicide? Is it a sin? Or, by giving up on this life, is he doing God's will and obeying his call?
What might have happened if his wishes weren't known? It comes down to a gamble.
You could withhold aggressive treatment surmising he is beyond recovery, and provide comfort care. Or you might aggressively treat, hoping for recovery but also risking a person on permanent life-support. And if that happens, do you then treat every infection and every crisis until the heart or lungs finally give up? Or, recognizing the futile, do you eventually withdraw the commitment to care you initiated - the antibiotics, life support or nutrition?
I believe in many cases these withdrawal-of-care decisions have to be made.
If you are Bush, you always, without question 'err on the side of life' (or at least claim to). You treat aggressively and provide unending support. Ideally, everyone dies as late as possible, as a 'code'.
Or perhaps that is torture. Flogging the person forward through pain and distress until the body finally, mercifully, stops.
I know something about Parkinson's, as my dad died of it. What would become the final process of death by pneumonia, as it unfolded, was complicated and ambiguous, and ultimately brutal. He couldn't move or talk. The staff told me the morphine put him 'out of it'. Two days before he died I discovered he was cognizant and would communicate with blinks. It must have been hell, a death march.
Stepping back, I'm curious who will argue the legislature should be involved in this common tragedy?
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Rue- I'm sorry to hear about your dad. It must have been a helluva death, indeed.
Three cases from my neuro bulletin board really stand out. Two of them were sisters, young girls who inherited a more aggressive form of mom's mitochondrial disease. The first died at about 6 y/o; the doctors believed her case was hopless and the mom agreed to a DNR. It must have haunted her, because her second daughter was treated aggressively with everything in the medical armamentarium. She had nuerologically regressed to the point of total care and was multiple meds for seizures. When her gut shut down, she was put on total parenteral nutrition through a central line. When her kidneys shut down, she was put on dialysis. The central line became infected many times, and she was treated aggressively with powerful IV antibiotics, and the line was moved several times. She was kept alive like this more than four years- two years more than her sister. In the end, of course, she died anyway. I have to wonder- which course did the mom feel was best?
Then there is a man who was fervently out to "save" Terri. He and his wife adopted a child whose brain was so totally destroyed (I think by in utero CMV infection) that he was only expected to live for a year or two. The boy is now 16. He is profoundly retarded, non-communicative and total care. He has such severe contractures that his hip joints have pulled out of their sockets and he's had several arm and leg surgeries. His scoliosis is so bad that it's causing him severe consipation. He can't see. He needs to be suctioned. The adoptive parents have totally wrapped their lives around taking care of this boy. Is it just me, or does this seem ghoulish???
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Terry Schiavo didn’t die because a bomb meant to destroy a brutal despotic regime accidentally killed her. She didn’t die because a jury accidentally judged her to be guilty of a crime she was not. She did not die because the hospital’s resources were limited. All of which are tragic examples of deaths that have and do occur, but Mrs. Schiavo’s death was not an accident and there was plenty of resources to keep her alive. Calling me “callous moron” and a “hypocrite” because I am skeptical of the reasoning behind orchestrating tragedy when there is already plenty of tragedy that would seem to be quite inherent in the processes of society would seem rather juvenile. It is unfortunate that the two of you chose that line of rhetoric. I’ve not instigated any personal attacks and I'm not interested in discussing Rue’s single-minded anti-war or anti-Bush socialist politics. I’m simply trying to understand something that is naturally deeply disturbing.
Most in my family are religious conservatives. I think that we all disagree with artificial means of sustaining life, largely on religious grounds. Keeping with this belief, none of my family, as far as I know, has ever lived on a ventilator or any artificial means of sustaining life for more then 3 days, if the doctor determined the care to be indefinite. But no one in my family has ever starved to death. Sometimes it was taxing on the family. There was a period of about a year and half in which my great grandmother was basically fed applesauce everyday, because she couldn’t feed herself. I am told that my great great grandmother lived that way for 6 years in a nursing home, but I was very young then. We could have decided that their lives were not worth living and simply stopped feeding them, but that was a notion that never crossed my mind and if it was ever considered by anyone else in my family it wasn’t mention to me. Allowing someone to die is not the same thing as forcing it to happen.
Taking someone off life-support was not supposed to mean that you locked them in a room away from the people who love them and systematically starve them until they die, because their lives have been ruled by the government not to be worth living. That’s not what I thought it meant when I signed my will, and I’m thinking now that perhaps I need to spell that out in my will. I can only hope that my last days are quick and painless, but life rarely ends so cleanly, and the next best thing would be to have people who love me enough to feed me applesauce until I die. I don’t ever want to be so cynical that I stop believing that old age should burn and rage at the close of day. But I also don’t want to live in a state of suspended animation while my family struggles to keep me alive at whatever cost.
At this stage, I hope Mrs. Schiavo is in a better place and her family can come to terms with their loss.
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This was emailed to me from the St. Petersburg, FL Times Deputy Editor of Editorials. I just had to pass it on.
Living Will is best revenge
Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here’s what mine says:
* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn’t be long enough for me.
* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud
that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.
* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I’d be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.
* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.
* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.
* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.
* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges,elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.
* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.
* I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me “Bobby,” as if they had known me since childhood.
* I’m not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a “Bobby’s Law” that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.
* Even if the “Bobby’s Law” idea doesn’t work out, I want Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in “less government and more freedom” - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.
* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country’s attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.
* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.
* I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.
* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I’d want President Bush - the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best “to err on the side of life.”
* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF’s care.
* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with th
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