# A simple debate..Re Terri Schiavo **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 18, 2005, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210 "2005-03-18T21:35:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![catsix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@catsix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/catsix)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/41 "2005-03-21T19:05:29Z")
> [@](#): > > **Stryfe** said: > Possibly also true, but does this only happen to poeple who feel no pain? If it happens often there is a good statistical chance that there are people starving to death who can feel it and who may be aware of it but can do nothing about it. I know of at least one case in which a conscious person not in a PVS died of what was essentially starvation and dehydration. The man was in his later 70s and had a tumor in his esophagus that made it impossible for him to swallow anything, including food, water and his own saliva. Because he was conscious and not brain damaged or in a PVS, he was also capable of refusing to be kept alive by any ‘heroic measures’ such as a feeding tube. Until the morning of his death, he remained conscious and able to communicate, and through it all he denied that he was in any kind of pain and refused any kind of pain medication because he said he was not in pain. Now, I had to take his word for it, but I hardly think that there’d be any reason for a man who was terminally ill to lie about being in pain. > [@](#): > > Slow Starvation is wrong. And yet it is exactly how this man, with esophageal cancer, chose to die. > [@](#): > > **Airman Doors** said: > For all this talk about medical ethics, it’s still a fact that we put dogs down with more mercy than what is being shown to a human being. Where’s the ethics in that? You would perhaps be interested in this quote: > [@](#): > > **Isaac Asimov** said: > “No decent human being would allow an animal to suffer without putting it out of its misery. It is only to human beings that human beings are so cruel as to allow them to live on in pain, in hopelessness, in living death, without moving a muscle to help them. It is against such attitudes that this book fights.” He was referring to the book _Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying_ by Derek Humphry, which I read years ago when it was first released for a research paper that I did on assisted suicide due to my experiences with the man I wrote about above. While I can’t say whether active euthanasia would be proper for Terri Schiavo, I can say that there ought to be such an option for those who are conscious, or for those who have made living wills and/or durable power of attorney declarations regarding what should happen to them if they are ever in a position like hers. It definitely should be an option for those who are terminally ill and conscious, and their doctors should be able to help them. Prolonging life is not always in keeping with the Hippocratic Oath, specifically this part: “Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty.” I wish more doctors understood that caring for a patient does not always mean keeping their bodies alive through the indignity of a living death. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/42 "2005-03-21T20:00:34Z")
Does anybody know if Terri’s body falls asleep at night and wakes up again in the morning? Does it take naps during the day? ---
**Author:** ![kung\_fu\_lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f4b2a3/32.png) [@kung\_fu\_lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kung_fu_lola)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/43 "2005-03-21T22:49:29Z")
> [@Stryfe](#): > > I hope you are right. > > I would rather that someone in that position were given a humane injection and allowed to die quickly rather than slowly fading away. > > I’m thinking not just of the patient but also the family, isn’t it more humane to allow them to die quickly rather than putting the patient and the family in the unenviable position of watching them die over a period of time. Even if the patient does not suffer, the family would. Actually, **DoctorJ** said just that: often the hardest part is the wait, for the family. I am not a doctor but my mother worked for years with palliative patients, and **anecdotally** , if you are officially Not Gonna Make It, it’s not such a bad way to go. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/44 "2005-03-21T23:08:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Does anybody know if Terri’s body falls asleep at night and wakes up again in the morning? Does it take naps during the day? Yes. Normal sleep-wake cycles are characteristic of a persistent vegetative state, because the reticular activating system of the brain is still intact. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2005, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/45 "2005-03-22T00:31:37Z")
> [@Stryfe](#): > > I hope you are right. > > I would rather that someone in that position were given a humane injection and allowed to die quickly rather than slowly fading away. > > I’m thinking not just of the patient but also the family, isn’t it more humane to allow them to die quickly rather than putting the patient and the family in the unenviable position of watching them die over a period of time. Even if the patient does not suffer, the family would. > > If it was me or a relative in that position I would rather an alternative was available that did not involve starving to death. I’m pretty sure my father died of a combination of starvation and Demerol. He had intestinal cancer and ate almost nothing for a couple of weeks. And he was pretty much kept under the influence of Demerol. The weakness from almost no food, the cancer taking most of what food he was able to take and the inactivity from the Demerol resulted in pneumonia which did the job. I think this is a fairly common ending for people with terminal cancer. ---
**Author:** ![Bookkeeper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bookkeeper/32/281_2.png) [@Bookkeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bookkeeper)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/46 "2005-03-23T19:14:53Z")
Just a nit-pick, but what would happen to Terri Schiavo is actually fast starvation. Slow starvation is what happens when a person is fed less than the minimum amount of food required for survival, and results in the body slowly wasting away, as can be seen in pictures of famine sufferers and concentration camp victims. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/47 "2005-03-23T19:59:36Z")
From the _Los Angeles Times_, here is some information on the[effects of no food or water](http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-schaivodeath23mar23,1,6150421.story?coll=la-home-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true) on those who are greatly weakened by some existing medical condition. Schiavo isn’t as weakened as those with a terminal illness but with much of her brain gone it seems questionable to me whether the impulses generated by the automatic nervous sytem actually register as pain, hunger or thirst. I know from personal experience that as you get older you might not really get hungry at all. One of the problems with old people is that we often don’t eat properly because we are not really hungry. I know in my case when my wife is working at her volunteer job I frequently skip the noon mean and don’t really miss it hardly feeling any hunger at all. The agonized cries about how horrible “starving her to death” is seem misplaced to me since those who voice them have in mind a starving a normal, healthy individual and not one who has no mental function. ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/48 "2005-03-23T20:15:03Z")
Anecdotal evidence is all well and good, but unless you can demonstrate to me conclusively that she feels no pain I will continue to think that she is suffering all the pains of hell. BTW, good luck proving that. Get my point? ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/49 "2005-03-23T20:20:42Z")
> [@Airman Doors](#): > > Anecdotal evidence is all well and good, but unless you can demonstrate to me conclusively that she feels no pain I will continue to think that she is suffering all the pains of hell. BTW, good luck proving that. Get my point? I provided a cite based on the testimony of those who have studied the matter for years and over many such cases. I doubt you would believe it if Schiavo herself wrote you a testimonial. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/50 "2005-03-23T20:37:39Z")
> [@Airman Doors](#): > > Anecdotal evidence is all well and good, but unless you can demonstrate to me conclusively that she feels no pain I will continue to think that she is suffering all the pains of hell. BTW, good luck proving that. Get my point? Suffering all the pains of hell before or after the tube was removed? ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/51 "2005-03-23T22:04:37Z")
> [@Airman Doors](#): > > Anecdotal evidence is all well and good, but unless you can demonstrate to me conclusively that she feels no pain I will continue to think that she is suffering all the pains of hell. BTW, good luck proving that. Get my point? Which is why they have her on a morphine drip. I think it’s more of a feel-good measure, but they still did it. ---
**Author:** ![Fuji\_Kitakyusho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f0a364/32.png) [@Fuji\_Kitakyusho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuji_Kitakyusho)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/52 "2005-03-23T22:34:45Z")
I can (theoretically) pull any random cadaver which hasn’t deteriorated too badly from a slab in the local morgue and animate it artificially by applying electrical impulses to the muscles. With the right equipment set up, I can also make the heart beat and ventilate the lungs. If a person’s autonomous nervous system performs these functions instead of my hypothetical machinery, how does that fundamentally alter the rights to which this person is entitled? ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/53 "2005-03-24T01:29:30Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Which is why they have her on a morphine drip. I think it’s more of a feel-good measure, but they still did it. I missed this. Do you know where you got the info on the morphine drip. ---
**Author:** ![Harborwolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Harborwolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harborwolf)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/54 "2005-03-24T01:41:13Z")
> [@Airman Doors](#): > > Anecdotal evidence is all well and good, but unless you can demonstrate to me conclusively that she feels no pain I will continue to think that she is suffering all the pains of hell. BTW, good luck proving that. Get my point? Airman, if you think she is suffering without the feeding tube how do you think she’s felt for the last fifteen years? ---
**Author:** ![holmes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e95f7d/32.png) [@holmes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/holmes)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/55 "2005-03-24T03:15:49Z")
**Airman** Her cerebral cortex is mostly gone. The human body has limitations. Sure sometimes people overcome those limitations. This isn’t one of those times. I don’t get people like you. There’s reams of documentation; you have posters here describing in great detail what her condition is…yet you ignore it. Why do you need to believe this woman is suffering? ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/56 "2005-03-24T04:55:45Z")
> [@holmes](#): > > **Airman** Her cerebral cortex is mostly gone. The human body has limitations. Sure sometimes people overcome those limitations. This isn’t one of those times. > > I don’t get people like you. There’s reams of documentation; you have posters here describing in great detail what her condition is…yet you ignore it. > > Why do you need to believe this woman is suffering? And in addition to that there is the fact that has been litigated to death that her wishes were to not to have extreme measures used in the case of what has happened. The evidence produced for that convinced the Florida court and that court’s finding has been upheld in hearing after hearing up and down the court system year after dreary year. In that case it doesn’t make any difference what anyone else wants. As lawyers and medical people have said over an over again, if you force unwanted medical treatment on someone it is assault. ---
**Author:** ![Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/46a35a/32.png) [@Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walker_in_Eternity)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/57 "2005-03-24T10:02:41Z")
> [@catsix](#): > > And yet it is exactly how this man, with esophageal cancer, chose to die. > … > You would perhaps be interested in this quote: > … > I wish more doctors understood that caring for a patient does not always mean keeping their bodies alive through the indignity of a living death. I agree that if a person conciously chooses to die in this fashion then that is their right, I also think that a person in pain should have the right to die by injection/lethal cocktail etc. Although I see that the system could be open to abuse by grabbing relatives (I’m not commenting on any particular case with this comment BTW), and old relatives could be persuaded to quietly slip away. I especially agree with the comment on the “indignity of a living death”. But we have evidence from one person that quick starvation is not painful, it is not really a representative sample, nor does everyone respond the same to a given set of circumstances. I think that each case should be reviewed on its own merits. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/58 "2005-03-24T12:05:51Z")
Look here: If a convict is on death row, about to be excuted, and the governor gets wind of something compelling, he can grant a stay of execution or a even a pardon. The courts can’t ell the governor “no”. (Maybe the president has the same authority). Do you have a problem with that? No? Then why can’t the governor/president do the same thing when a patient is about to die from withheld food/water, and they get wind of something that may suggest the person is not a vegetable? I have no problem with that. All of you want who want to make it some anti-Bush thing, you’re just showing where your real interests lie. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/59 "2005-03-24T13:16:03Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#): > > Look here: > > … > why can’t the governor/president do the same thing [stay removal of feeding tube] when a patient is about to die from withheld food/water, and they get wind of something that may suggest the person is not a vegetable? > > I have no problem with that. > > All of you want who want to make it some anti-Bush thing, you’re just showing where your real interests lie. The hypothetical isn’t the same as the Schiavo case. In the latter instance the patient, who isn’t a condemned criminal and not under the Governor’s purview, stated that no extraordinary measures were wanted. And I suppose your comment that the governor got “wind of something that may suggest the person is not a vegetable” is referring to Jeb Bush’s statement that a neurologist had studied “medical records” and thinks that Schiavo might have limited consciousness. I have some questions about that. I don’t see how the medical people treating the patient would release confidential medical records to someone who is not a part of the medical group treating the patient. And if this “neurologist” was taken in as a member of the team wouldn’t he or she be bound by the same confidentiallity as the other doctors? And as a medical professional wouldn’t this individual give a possible different diagnosis to the other team members and not to an outsider such as Jeb Bush? So what "neurologist"and what “medical records” are we talking about? I heard Bush make his claim on TV and it was pretty vague. Bush’s whole statement sounds to me like that of Bill Frish, MD who made a diagnosis based on what he had seen on TV. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210/60 "2005-03-24T13:27:54Z")
> [@David Simmons](#): > > The hypothetical isn’t the same as the Schiavo case. In the latter instance the patient, who isn’t a condemned criminal and not under the Governor’s purview, stated that no extraordinary measures were wanted. > > And I suppose your comment that the governor got “wind of something that may suggest the person is not a vegetable” is referring to Jeb Bush’s statement that a neurologist had studied “medical records” and thinks that Schiavo might have limited consciousness. > > I have some questions about that. I don’t see how the medical people treating the patient would release confidential medical records to someone who is not a part of the medical group treating the patient. And if this “neurologist” was taken in as a member of the team wouldn’t he or she be bound by the same confidentiallity as the other doctors? And as a medical professional wouldn’t this individual give a possible different diagnosis to the other team members and not to an outsider such as Jeb Bush? So what "neurologist"and what “medical records” are we talking about? I heard Bush make his claim on TV and it was pretty vague. Bush’s whole statement sounds to me like that of Bill Frish, MD who made a diagnosis based on what he had seen on TV. I wish I wrote the guys name down but one the radio yesterday they mentioned a doctor (who shared in a Nobel prize in medicine) who felt this case may have been misdiagnosed. The point here is if there’s even a gjost of chance that this woman is “alive” in the brain sense, we should take one last look. Once she’s physically dead the game’s over. I don’t give a damn over who did what and for what reason (politically), as long as the poor woman gets one more examination. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-simple-debate-re-terri-schiavo/295210.md?page=4)