The woman died in Italy after being in a coma for 17 years following a traffic accident. The doctors, family, and high court agreed to stop the feeding. She died unexpectedly soon after the treatment was suspended Friday.
Now the politicians are dragging her through the streets of public opinion. Murder! Murder! yell some (especially Bert). The Vatican isn’t happy. Religion is stamped all over this incident - did I mention Italy as the location.
This is “Italy’s Terri Schiavo” according to the article I read. Same type of reaction. Legislators diagnosing telepathically, attempting to pass laws, circumventing courts. I haven’t seen some of proposed actions but if it was anything like the flakes in Florida; nobody would be allowed to “die”. Beheaded?-feeding tube and respirator jammed down the stump. Pull the fresh ones out of the morgue and reanimate. Cooler heads finally prevailed so the geezers (I am one) can still go to Florida to die.
17 years people, she wasn’t coming back. I’m a non-believer, things like this just make me sure to update my living will (drive stake through heart if still quivering). How do believers (Og/heaven/paradise) not let go?
You’re going to a better place - walking the earth is over. How do you get the various countries, religions, medical disciplines to let go? I’m feeling frustrated over the time, newsprint, hot air expended over this when the world faces actual problems.
I think it’s disgusting when governments try to kill people or keep them alive against their own wishes and the wishes of their families. It’s a medieval attitude and a vulgar display of power. This is perhaps the last issue I would ever want politicians to be involved in.
I agree wholeheartedly. However, unfortunately, politicians have to get involved. They write the laws against murder so they have to decide what it means. It is an ethical dilemma our generation has to settle. Count me firmly on the side of the “right to die” both in regards to euthanasia and ‘pulling the plug’. But at the moment, however, there is a gray area in the law that needs to be sorted out by legislators or the courts. I wish there was someone else to do it, because I hate politicians, but who?
That’s true, and my wording obviously wasn’t very good. I don’t mind this being a legal issue, but I object to the grandstanding and to the idea of politicians behaving as the Italian legislators did here and as the U.S. Congress did in the Schiavo case, where they dropped everything to hastily pass laws designed strictly to interfere in one high-profile case.
Was this woman in a coma, or a persistent vegetative state?
They’re rather different medical conditions, and the article that I read said that she was in a PVS, but the headline said coma.
That kind of sloppiness only allows the people who argue against the right to die to start bringing up coma patients who have awakened after years in a coma when no such thing is possible for someone who is in a PVS. They use it in courts as a blatant appeal to emotion, and are dishonest about the fact that a coma and a persistent vegetative state are very different animals.
not a doctor but after 17 years in a coma I would be stunned to find out she wasnt a carrot.
I agree that there needs to be some kind of guide lines here but politicians getting directly involved anywhere are just making noise for the local religious voters, not actually working on a real solution
