For me, the intense drama, Herculean legal action and international attention focused on one woman, Terry Schiavo, in an incapacitated state for 15 of her 41 years (doctors appointed by Florida courts to examine Schiavo say "persistent vegetative state," other physicians have questioned that diagnosis - nothing in this case is without rancor and contention), reminds me that ultimately we are a nation — and a government — of individuals, that every life truly does count, and that people of good will can intensely disagree over matters of conscience.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Eric Olsen
agree entirely bhw
27 - Thad Anderson
I don't have any "certainty" one way or the other, and I can understand why people are concerned with this case. It's just that personally, I think it is sad for someone in a persistent vegetative state - or whatever you want to call the condition she's been in for so many years - to be kept alive and put on TV. If I'm ever in that situation, I've instructed my family to let me rest in peace after 3 years.
And this whole "culture of life" vs. "culture of death" crap is the most offensive political tactic I've heard of since the right tried to say that people who were against the Iraq War were being unpatriotic. That's why this issue is getting a lot of negative reactions - it's just the latest example of the right trying to tar and feather anyone who disagrees with them.
Read this article about the GOP memo on the issue if you don't believe me: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002213728_memo20.html
28 - Floris Vermeir
Wathever they decide, to let her die or not, I will only note this.
If they would decide to let her die, then let her die in human way, not from hunger.
It might be controversial, and perhaps needs to be checked on your laws, but there are countries around the world where this is possible.
And letting somebody die from hunger, calls up a lot of resentment. Where I live in Belgium, when peoples live is ended [and legally ok] are put to sleep (as far as I know).
Wathever is decided, looking from both view points, the commotion about this is understandable. Giving somebody up is very hard, if you can visit her every day, she is your child. On the other hand, letting her go, and not letting her live in a persistent vegetative state, live a human life, and keep the good memorys you have at her is also normal.
Life goes on, if you like it or not.
Love is also, to take a step aside, and set somebody free. As for yes or no, let the court decide that. And as the person above wrote, give her some dignity back, instead of putting her always on television. Ask yourself these questions: would you like this to happen to you ? Would you like to be treated that way ? I know, I wouldn't like it.
A little poem to end:
Memories
Its becoming dark now,
soon duisternis (=darkness) will come
and then after a while when all lights have dissapeard,
the night will fall.
Tommorrow the sun will rise again
and light will awake those alseep.
A new day is born.
A cycle continuing into eternity,
hopefully that is.
So goes life,
one day at a time,
till the day comes,
when we fall asleep for the last time,
but we only die for real when we are forgotten.
Lets not forget those, we knew,
because in our memory of them they will live on.
========
Written in memory of my grandmother and other old people
i used to know but who have already passed away.
29 - Eric Olsen
thanks Floris, I totally agree about the hunger angle, very ugly and inumane, but I am also against assisted suicide, at least as general public policy, and so would rather see her live
30 - Uriel
>people of good will can intensely disagree over matters of conscience.
>it just doesn't seem right to let the woman starve to death
People of good will, if they're ignorant enough, can believe absolutely anything at all. Let's recall that a lot of these same "people of good will" oppose sex education and contraception, which leads to unwanted pregnancies for kids. And they still believe in the WMD rationale for invading Iraq. (See Delusion Carries Bush.)
A clinical assistant professor of neurology at Brown Medical School has it right:
"Performing a medical procedure against a patient's will (or that of the patient's legal surrogate) is unethical and illegal. If Terri Schiavo's feeding tube is now reinserted, the government institutions and individuals responsible will be guilty of assault and should be held accountable." (Letter to Editor, New York Times, March 22, 2005.)
The idea of Schiavo's starvation causing her to suffer is a diversion. As another letter in the same NYT issue points out: "It is an accepted medical practice to withhold tube feedings and intravenous fluids from terminally ill cancer patients. In 23 years of oncology practice, I cannot recall a patient whose suffering was increased by withholding tube feedings and intravenous fluids. In these cases, patients generally die from renal failure, which is perceived to be a painless way to die."
Anyway, if there's the least prospect of suffering, then pain medication can be administered. No one's going to object to that.
31 - Eric Olsen
let's not recall anything at all about "a lot of these same people" and sex education and WMD - this is about one person and one set of circumstances. Talk about "diversion."
And you can cavalierly dismiss the screaming of every single cell in this woman's body -- whether she is sentient or not -- as they wither away from nutritional deprivation over hours and days, but I cannot. This isn't th ekind of "pain" that can be simply anaesthetized away
32 - Dave Nalle
Eric:
While you're completely wrong on the whole business of individual cells feeling pain and your generally overromanticized take on Terry Schiavo's death, you do have one good point. When Uriel brings up WMDs and calls Bush delusional to open up a discussion of this unrelated issue, he immediately destroys his own credibility, by pointing out that he's obsessive and delusional in his own right.
Dave
33 - Tristan
David Nalle is now a Board Certified physician , I see! ????????
By what right and professional expertise do you go and make that absolutely ridiculous "CLAIM" that "While you're completely wrong on the whole business of individual cells feeling pain and your generally overromanticized take on Terry Schiavo's death"--- ??????????
WHAT basis do you dare to make that presumptuous "statement" David----"completely wrong" --! That's an extremely strong statement and I want to see your proof for making that statement. Or is it simply your "thoughts" on this subject David .....?
34 - Dave Nalle
Oh, do shut up, Tristan. All it takes is a highschool physiology course or about 10 minutes reading to know that individual cells don't feel pain. Find me ONE source that suggests that cells feel anything at all or go back to baiting Dawn.
Dave
35 - Tristan
Nalle:
I see your temper got the best of you--as I knew it would when confronted by real truthful inquiry!
On being questioned WHERE on earth you came up with such a STUPID and totally unfounded statement you tried to pass off as assumed FACT---all you can do is say "SHUT UP" ...........
Eric goes and crafts a very well thought out and scientifically backed-up comment---and you totally trash it in one brief outburst and use some "high-school" biology thought that just popped into your drug-addled what "passes' for a "brain" ..???
GET REAL!!!! "oh just shut up" is the "BEST" refutation you have????????
36 - Dave Nalle
Tristan:
Still waiting for that explanation of how individual cells feel pain. The mechanisms of this process are what fascinate me. What with not having any means of perceiving, processing or communicating the pain, or for that matter even being individual living entities, how those cells feel pain must be pure magic.
OMG I just hit my spacebar really hard. I can hear it crying. So when DID you become an animist, Tristan?
Dave
37 - Phillip Winn
Dave, keep waiting. And call him Tristian; he loves it!
38 - Tristan
Nalle:
what fascinates me is how you can consistently and methodically avoid answering the questions posed to YOU as to what the BASIS of your strong statements of so-called "FACTS" were ?
I guess the questions were just too "difficult" for you to "answer" which gives us a very LOUD answer by your obvious AVOIDANCE.
39 - Dave Nalle
As far as I can tell you never asked me a question, Tristy, at least not one that makes any sense. Ask me a question and I'll answer it. But if you ask me to explain what a cell is - since you clearly have no idea - I'll refer you to a link on basic cell structure.
Dave
40 - Tristan
Nalle being his cute dodgy self:
1st he doesn't "remember being asked A question--(there were several and they're all up above and he KNOWS it--he just refuses to deal with it cuz he can't..)--
2nd--he goes and --oh yeh-!does remember that they "weren't very intelligent"---
well of COURSE they weren't very intelligent when they put him on the spot and made him face his own absurd and unbacked statements of "FACT" he tried to use against Eric's well thought out and scientifically backed staements....
just like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar!
41 - Dave Nalle
Tristan. I ask this out of honest concern. Are you on some sort of drugs?
You said: "Eric's well thought out and scientifically backed staements...."
Here's that scientific statement to refresh your memory:
"nd you can cavalierly dismiss the screaming of every single cell in this woman's body -- whether she is sentient or not -- as they wither away from nutritional deprivation over hours and days, but I cannot. This isn't th ekind of "pain" that can be simply anaesthetized away"
Do point out to me the scientific evidence in that paragraph, because I seem to have missed it.
Dave
42 - Tristan
DRUGS" MUST be YOU, eh Nalle???
you seem to be trying to get farther and farther from the questions I seriously asked you and now you are solely trying to deflect from the issue by questioning MY statements now~~
and when that hasn't WORKED allready TWICE (you aRE a bit thick, aren't you!)--
you have to then veer off tack again and keep using that oh-so-lame-and-childish "you must be on drugs tristan"--
Every time I hear you say that I know you are at your wit's end; you have simply run out of steam and gotten totally backed into a corner--unable to even defend your position anymore--so you lash out with that imbecilic childish snap that i must be on drugs..
Nalle; go back to your rock and lick your wounds!
When you decide to get serious and real, and can refrain from getting mad when I ask you to back up your nonsense--let's talk!
43 - Dave Nalle
Ok, I give up. You're a genius, Tristan. I won't bother to try to talk to you anymore.
Dave
44 - Tristan
Nalle calling a blogger a PEDOPHILE!!!
Your'e not getting off that easy this time Nalle---when you cross the line and break the law--in public here on this Blog--by accusing me of being a PEDOPHILE, you can't just say:"hey, I don't like this game anymore. I made a boo-boo and want to go home to mommy"--
Doesn't quite work that way sonny!
Here is your statement in case you forgot:
"Comment 38 posted by Dave Nalle on March 23, 2005 03:22 PM:
I'm afraid Tristan just lost his job at the video store for sticking pornos in the kiddy section again
Dave"
Sometimes it might be best if you think before you write a libelous statement and then send it off to a public forum on the internet Nalle--
45 - Dawn
There is nothing about the statement you quoted Tristan that even comes close to qualifying as calling someone a pederast.
What is also funny, is that you clearly must be thumbing through the dictionary and just picking words out and plugging them into your comments, as you make zero sense 90% of the time.
It helps to know what you are talking about you knucklehead.
46 - gonzo marx
ok..with all the luv on this Thread..i feel i have ta sound off on the actual Topic
first..my deepest sympathies to the Parents, whose child is involved...who obvioulsy cling so desperately in a seemingly hopeless medical case..
second...to the husband, who has refused divorce during the 15 years of this ordeal and who last week turned down 1 million dollars to walk away from this, no harm..no foul...all in the name of devotion to his wife and what he believes are her Wishes in the matter
and finally..to all those that have been conned by their elected Representitives that claim to follow "conservative" princicples and "values", yet whom have demonstrated utter contempt for the concepts of state's rights, the rule of law, a lesser role of the federal government in private lives..who are actively seeking an activist judge to rule they way they desire with NO regard for the due process this case has undergone
and let me leave you with an example of the utter Hypocrisy involved..
a few days ago, in a similar case in Texas that involved a 5 month old infant that had no medical prospect of any life outside of a hospital, the child was removed from all life supporting machines based upon a Texas Law that delineates the parameters for "unplugging" a patient...those rules include the medical diagnosis and that the "ability to pay" over rule the will of parents and family...
this Law was signed by then governor G.W. Bush
no matter where you personally fall on this Issue...and it IS a difficult, and involved Position..we are a Nation of Laws
that is..unless the Republican Leadership decides they can score points
i refer you to the leaked memo from 2 days ago...which, if true..and the fiasco on CSPAN seems to bear this out...then i fear for our Republic
just as i fear for the all those that may have these Decisions taken out of their hands by "Big Brother" and not resolved under the Rule of Law
Excelsior!
47 - Temple Stark
GonzoM, I posted about this yesterday in my post:
Terri Schiavo: corruption of the legal system
Except for the memo part, which hadn't broke when I posted. But I didn't need the memo to see it for what it was about - and apparently Americans didn't need to see it either ----- grandstanding lizards, this time by Republicans.
But it can't be repeated enough, so thanks. Temple
48 - gonzo marx
heh..yer welcome Temple..
but of course..i didn't rant on fer you..
{8^P~~~~~~
feel free ta Quote my screeds...and hunt around..i've done enough of them since i came here
no need fer capital letters tho..my name is just the way i want it here...the connotations..the puns..it warms the cockles of my black flabby lil heart that someone gets a chuckle..or a stray thought..out or perusing my mad meanderings..
but yer milage may vary, and objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear...
Excelsior!
49 - gerri
reflecting back,seeing how her "dearly beloved"was tired of her being a burden,in his life---if a hidden camera had been placed in her room,just what might it have caught---a nurse has testified,hearing him say,i wonder how long"this bitch"is going to live?if he wasn't hiding something,why wasn't she allowed,to go outside?after all,she could sit in a wheel chair.he didn't want the public to see her,it doesn't take a very smart person,to figure out why.she was capable of lot's more,than he wanted to admit to.i say,if he knew what she wanted,more than her parents,then why didn't he go ahead,and rush death for her?there is ways to do it,and get away with it.in reality,he's getting away with it now.and also since there was no witness,the day she collapsed,who's to say,he didn't cause that?it sure didn't take him long to "move on"with his life..i think he's getting away with murder(then or now)doesn't matter---but one day he will have to answer,for this horrendous act.....
50 - Uriel
>you can cavalierly dismiss the screaming of every single cell in this woman's body -- whether she is sentient or not -- as they wither away from nutritional deprivation over hours and days, but I cannot. This isn't th ekind of "pain" that can be simply anaesthetized away
--Comment 31 posted by Eric Olsen on March 23, 2005 01:11 PM
Eric, you might take a look at "Neither 'Starvation' Nor the Suffering It Connotes Applies to Schiavo, Doctors Say," New York Times, March 25, 2005.
51 - Dave Nalle
Cells have no mouths, but they must scream.
I still don't understand this thing about individual cells feeling pain and expressing it.
Dave
52 - Eric Olsen
okay literalists, I was, I thought, obviously speaking metaphonically, and yet no one can tell me that any living being is not severely distressed by being deprived of nutrients required to keep it alive
53 - Dave Nalle
I thought it was a metaphor, but I wanted to be sure. The original phrasing was a bit odd.
As for every living being suffering because of the deprivation of nutrients, that seems believable. But the distinction in the Schiavo case is that however much her body is suffering, there's no sentience there to register it.
If your hand gets cut off and then later gets run over by a car, do you worry about how much it is suffering when the car runs it over?
Dave
54 - Eric Olsen
there must be SOME sentience there, even if it is at the most basic stimulus/response level, and if there is SOME sentience, then it is cruel, in my opinion.
55 - Eric Olsen
in other words, even an amoeba recoils when you stick it with something sharp
56 - JR
If you don't shut down a computer properly, it always reacts by admonishing you when you turn it back on. So is it cruel to yank the plug on a computer?
57 - Eric Olsen
it isn't a living thing - though the line has certainly blurred, it is still distinguishable
58 - JR
There's this species of wasp that injects its eggs into a grasshopper, where they hatch and the larvae feed on the grasshopper. The wasp always finds a small cave to stash the grasshopper/incubator to hide it from other predators. When it finds one, it drags the grasshopper to the entrance, goes inside to make sure there are no other critters in the cave, then it goes back out and drags the grasshopper into the cave.
But if you move the grasshopper, even a very short distance, while the wasp is in the cave, the wasp comes out, finds the grasshopper, drags it to the entrance, goes inside to check out the cave, and comes back to drag the grasshopper in. But if you've moved the grasshopper again, the wasp comes out finds the grasshopper, drags it back to the entrance of the cave, goes inside to check out the cave, and comes back out to drag the grasshopper in. But if you move the grasshopper again, etc.
Researchers have gone through dozens of iterations of this routine, and the wasp always checks to cave again.
Sentience or machine?
59 - Eric Olsen
insect brain
60 - JR
Would even insects experience extreme distress?
My problem is that I would make the same emotional distinction as you do. I still have trouble killing bugs unless they're mosquitos and they deserve it for picking on me. Which reaction also makes no sense.
Intellectually, on the other hand, I can't see how individual cells would feel anything like distress or pain. Pain would seem to be an emergent property of a critical mass of nerve cells specifically designed to send a signal to an even higher property of self-awareness. It would only exist in a network. It exists in vertebrates, I'm not so sure about anything "below" that. So no one cell can "feel" anything, even if it's a nerve cell.
Aside from that, would cells waste energy on "distress" when they're short of nutrients? Wouldn't they be more likely to shut down any processes that don't lead directly to getting more food? Or, if they are part of a larger organism, they might even kill themselves to spare energy for more important cells ("programmed cell death" is part of so many other normal processes). They really are just machines. (And parts of machines.)
It's like the Ikea commercial - we feel sorry for starving cells because we are crazy. They have no feelings.
61 - Eric Olsen
those are very good points and I can't really refute any of them individually, but I do have a very strong sense that the organism as a whole would sense that it was in a state of helplessness and deteriorating and feel distress as a result.
62 - Dave Nalle
That's a purely emotional response though, Eric.
There's no evidence that a lump of flesh with no real connection to any functioning brain has anyone to convey the information of pain to. It's been clearly demonstrated with diseases like leprosy that the brain doesn't register pain if the mechanism to transmit the information to the brain isn't there. Well, if the brain is basically shut off and the cortex which would normally transmit that information is gone, then who exactly is experiencing the pain?
And does pain exist if there's no one to know that it's happening?
Dave
63 - DrPat
I know the stance JR is arguing from - yet I can't help wondering how many people shrilling about the painlessness of this judicially-mandated death are also slapping verbal wrists in the "foie gras" debate, and commiserating with chimps doing shampoo trials...
I can no more decide whether there is any "Terri Schiavo" there to suffer than I can conclude there is God to punish those who cause her death. There isn't enough information.
64 - Eric Olsen
but she has enough of a brain to do the things we see in the videos - she is not utterly incapacitated or in a coma. She is "conscious"
65 - Dave Nalle
Yes, what's left of her brain is connected to the exterior parts of her head. So when they stick a balloon in her face sometimes her eyes follow it. That's not consciousness as anyone recognizes it, and it sure doesn't mean she registers pain. One of the first test the doctors would have done on her was to prick various parts of her body with a pin, and when they did that they got no pain reaction at all.
Dave
66 - Tristan
I agree with Dr Pat entirely on this one.
I know, as much as I feel most of this hoopla is about politics and media spotlight---for both sides/parties...I also had to pause at EO's statement about "having a very stron sense" and ask myself: "is this solely gut reflex" or is there anything factually to support it.
I don't KNOW. All I DO know is that I wouldn't want to be lying in a hospital bed and BE conscious (not saying she IS!!!)---and be starved to death. That wouldn't be my preferential choice for self-exit!
On the other hand, if we did allow for medically and legally sanctioned right-to-die methods and it was my choice being in that bed, I'd much prefer they just substituted some substance in my IV to make me go to sleep and not wake up.
(this is my living will~~you all are witnesses! Don't let them keep me alive for 15 plus years like that~~but pleaseeeee don't STARVE me to death!!! Aggghhhhh..... I'm getting hungry!)
67 - DrPat
On the other hand - if there is no conscious person left in Terri Schiavo's body, whose desire is it that Michael Schiavo is honoring in pursuing this death? It seems equally arguable that the "person" who wanted not to be kept alive (even if that is conceded) has, in fact, already died.
68 - JR
Ooh, this is getting fun!
On the other hand - if there is no conscious person left in Terri Schiavo's body, whose desire is it that Michael Schiavo is honoring in pursuing this death? It seems equally arguable that the "person" who wanted not to be kept alive (even if that is conceded) has, in fact, already died.
Then who is being killed now?
69 - Dave Nalle
Our society is being killed bit by bit by the handmaidens of irrationality?
Did I win?
Dave
70 - DrPat
There is a body which still clings (however tenuously) to life. If Terri Schiavo is, in fact, brain dead, Michael Schiavo has no wife left for whom to defend a will to die - she and her will are already gone.
The parents want to tend the flesh that is left - it would be kinder to let them.
It just seems to me that once you concede "Terri Schiavo" is gone, you have undercut the moral and ethical argument her husband is making to retain her guardianship until the body dies as well.
71 - Dave Nalle
Except that he does maintain that she didn't want her body kept around in living death like this, so he's still serving her interests by making sure the body follows the spirit into oblivion.
Dave
72 - JR
I know the stance JR is arguing from - yet I can't help wondering how many people shrilling about the painlessness of this judicially-mandated death are also slapping verbal wrists in the "foie gras" debate, and commiserating with chimps doing shampoo trials...
I didn't think I was "shrilling", but the point is well taken. People on both sides of this debate are seriously conflicted, as witnessed by the baby in Houston who was allowed to die under a law signed by G.W. Bush.
Animal testing isn't something I particularly object to, but surely some those animals suffer far more pain than Terri Schiavo ever will.
As far as the parents, I don't think their best interests are well served by letting them cling to the body the way they are, but that one definitely ain't my call.
And I don't believe starvation is such a painful way to go. I've gone hungry for a few days and it doesn't feel that bad. All indications are that it only gets less uncomfortable as you go.
It's also a time-honored way to die, as for example Glenn Seaborg, who, after the death of his wife and suffering a stroke himself, announced, "I'm going home to die", and refused further food.
If I decided I'd been around long enough (say in six or seven hundred years), I'd either stop eating or go take a hike in a blizzard.
Now, burning to death - that would suck.
73 - Shark
A worse fate:
reading about Terri Schiavo until one becomes a vegetable.
(I wonder if Terri Schiavo is in any worse pain than a dead horse that's being beaten verbally...?)
Gotta run: I'm going to write my "Terri Schiavo vs Hunter S. Thompson as the Top Guitarist in the World Who Practices Self-Mutilation" post... and set a new indoor record for comments.
74 - SFC Ski
Good one, Shark.
It gets worse at 1 AM, then the news channels go into endless repeat, all Terry, all the time!
75 - pbswatcher
Adeimantus has the best take on living wills. All the more surprising coming from a lawyer. From my own point of view all I see are both sides twisting the facts and their own previous statements for partisan advantage in future conflicts without any concern for Terri. See T + 7