Well, the doctors have explained that this woman is essentially dead. Her cerebral cortex might as well be replaced by a small gerbil, as I understand it. A burn victim? Disfigured, probably has emotional scarring, but not dead. Not a vegetable made to twitch. And I was being generous with the infant scenario - as others pointed out, she couldn’t swallow mush. Infants can. The “She can hardly move” thing was just another note in the list, I’m not saying we should kill everyone who has mobility problems. But Christopher Reeve is alive, very much so. His mind is still intact. He still gives speeches and appears at events for charity.
Look at it this way: it may be a waste of money, but its not like their really hurting her by doing this. Either she’s alive and vaguely cognizant and therefore shouldn’t be killed, or she’s brain dead and whatever they’re doing isn’t going to bother her. There’s apparently no lack of money involved, so…
It might not be hurting her any, but what’s it doing to the people who love her? What must it be like to know that the person you loved is gone and will never be back, not even enough to feed themselves, but not be able to have the closure of dealing with their physical death? That’s got to be pure hell on earth, and to drag it out for all this time is just cruel. There’s no way I’d ever want my loved ones to go through that. Euthanize me, starve me, smother me with a pillow, I don’t care, just don’t drag it out like that.
Besides which, if I were in that state, and had the slightest bit of consciousness left, I wouldn’t want to keep on “living” like that. Even if there is, by some miracle, still part of her personality in there, why would people who love her want to torture that bit of personality that’s left by condemning it to 40 more years of imprisonment and isolation?
Because a vegetative state is NOT the same as brain dead!
There is no question the cerebral cortex is very important to us as individuals, but it’s not the whole of who we are. Many important functions - breathing, heartbeat, hormone fluctuations just to name a few - originate in the skull but without the involvement of the top layer of gray matter.
In true brain death the breathing reflexes are absent or nearly so, all those other responses, systems, and so forth are likewise absent. Not so in a vegetative state - this woman’s cerebrum may be toast, but the cerebellum and brainstem and various other structures may well be intact, or at least intact enough to continue to function.
Likewise, some responses/reflexes don’t come from the brain at all - the sudden jerk of your arm you experience when you burn your hand comes from your spinal cord, not your brain. Someone who breaks their neck may feel absolutely nothing below their shoulders, yet may have a normal knee reflex when tapped in the appropriate spot with a hammer. Indeed, it is nothing unusual for parapalegics and quadrapelics to have their limbs move due to muscle spasms triggered by spinal nerves firing below the injury site.
So, in this case, her spinal reflexes may all be intact, and some of her lower brain functions. Certainly, since she breathes without assistance and her heart beats without artificial aid, she can’t be brain dead. The result of all this is that, while she can’t sit up, stand, walk, speak, or swallow - we’re not talking about coordinated movement here - her various body parts probably do spontaneously twitch, shift, and alter position. Even so, they probably do have to turn her regularly to make sure she doesn’t develop bedsores - her movements may be completely unrelated to sensations of pain or discomfort that prompt normal people to roll over in their sleep.
I’m not sure I can explain any better than that.
But that is not the question in this case; the question is who gets to draw the line, the spouse or the parents?
Or the courts vs. the governor.
I was brain damaged in an automobile accident in June 1995. Several hours after I was brought to the emergency room, my wife was brought to me. I was living on a ventilator and a respirator. The organ procurement doctor was there and said, “He is dead, sign this”, for a couple of days. The nuerologist and nuerosurgeon that treated me would not say if I would live or die off of life support. They went on to not say, if I lived, how well would I recover. It is just as well, neither me nor my wife have faith in doctors with crystal balls. After four days my wife made an independent decision. All life support was removed even the IV, I would live or die, God’s will. One thing was certain, she would not let me exist as a potted plant. It was my wife’s decision and whatever was guiding her at that time, not my mother, not the doctors, not the church, and certainly not the government. She did good. If I had died, that would have been my lot. I lived, I have recovered, I am an honor student, I had a full time job for a while, I advocate the rights of the disabled, I do all kinds of things with my new-found appreciation of life.
She will not have to make such a decision like that again. In the unlikely event that I should ever be incapacitated again and unable to express my wishes, I have executed a living will and it has been placed in the hands of five people whose judgement I trust.
Reeve can also think and feel pain. He is CONSCIOUS, Terri Schiavo is not.
I’ve just come to grasp with what this means, and why the condition is called a “vegetative state”.
She is, essentially, a plant in the shape of a human being. Her cells metabolize the nutrients that are injected into her, but that’s about it. Without a cerebral cortex, she has no capability of speech, no elaboration of thought and emotion, no memory, no bodily sensations such as touch, pressure, pain and temperature, no sight - indeed, no sensation or awareness of the world around her at all.
It is only a brain stem that keeps the machinery of her existance (respiration, heartbeat) in motion. In light of this, is Terri Schiavo even a person any more?
Att, near as I can tell, the physical part of her senses still works, just not the processing part. She can apparently track motion with her eyes and respond in a rudimentary, reflexive way to touch and painful stimulus. Her eyes still see, but that part of her brain that tells her what she’s seeing is gone. Her skin still feels, but she doesn’t know what she’s feeling anymore.
For my money, the person died 13 years ago, and everybody’s fighting over a huge lump of soulless tissue.
Of course, I’m not saying that Terri Schiavo is at the same cognitive level as the math student or the janitor. But I am saying that we don’t understand much about the brain.
As a few people have said, this is not an issue of what we on this board think, but of who in her family get’s to pull the plug. Is it the husband or the parents? The law seems to give preference to the husband. If a person has not executed a living will, who do you think should be the custodian?
For most maters in life, it sure seems the spouse should trump the parents. In life or death decisions, I’m unclear as to what the answer should be. Certainly in some cases (and this looks like one of those) the spouse is a conflicted party.
Sure makes a good case for getting that living will done. Without it, I’d tend to err on the side of life if I were a judge and two closely connected parties (parents vs spuse) had opposite ideas.
No, it doesn’t, at least not those provisions.
A bill of attainder is a bill that singles out a named individual or individuals for punishment. The Florida bill does not apply to Schiavo by name, and could be used in similar cases in the future.
Ex post facto is widely understood as only applying to criminal matters. That’s why, for example, the government can retroactively tax past economic activity.
Impairment of contracts clearly does not apply.
The Florida lege may be acting improvidently, but at least based on those particular provisions, it is not acting unconstitutionally.
Caveat: the provisions above track similar language in the federal constitution, and I’m assuming the Florida courts have interpreted them similarly.
This is a tough thing to make a decision on without actually seeing the person yourself to know what she can and can’t do, but if I had to guess I would say the parents probably have a lot of false hope that she will progress much more than she ever actually will be able to. The state stepping in on such a matter like this is atrocious, in my opinion.
However, here is what I don't understand : If the husband truly believes she has no hope for recovery, why does he not divorce her, turn the care essentially over to the parents and move on with his life? This is what he seems to be trying to do anyway by having her feeding turned off. Give up on the money, which if what I have read here is true is mostly tied up or spent anyway, and get on with your life. It doesn't seem like it would be worth the continued legal hassle and bills to continue the fight if he truly believes she is not "alive" in the traditional sense. Everyone gets what they want. Maybe the child custody comes into play then and holds it up, but it seems like that is a detail that could be worked out.i also wonder why they wouldn’t just do a lethal injection. even if she really can’t feel anything at least they could do it for her parents’ sake. but starving/dehydrating someone to death seems barbaric.
Because humane euthanasia and the quiet, dignified, painless death it brings is something only our pets have a right to in this country. That is why they wouldn’t just do a lethal injection. Sure, it would be easier on everybody involved, but it’s currently illegal. Were she a convicted felon, we could euthanize her, but as it stands her doctors are pretty much stuck with lettin her die of dehydration.
IUHomer:
The only reason I can imagine (correct me if I’m off base) for him to continue to fight this cause is this: he really cares that her wishes are honored.
To me, the most disturbing part of this case is the governor’s intervention and what it might mean to patient autonomy. As it stands now, unless you have specifically made other provisions (say, a Living Will) then your next of kin is authorized to make those decisions on your behalf.
Your next of kin is your spouse. If you’re unmarried, your next of kin is your parent, or one of your children, or one of your siblings. If you have a spouse, he/she is your next of kin and is authorized to make decisions for you (if you are unable) unless you have specifically designated someone else. The person who makes health care decisions on your behalf is honor bound to do what you would want him to do, or the best he can figure you would want him to do, not what he wants to do.
For example, my husband has stated that he would want “everything done” if he is incapacitated. I think this is stupid, but as his next of kin, if I ever have to make the decision for him, I will be honor bound to make sure “everything is done”.
I have explicitly told him that I would want nothing done for/to me, not anything, not even an IV, unless it was necessary to give me morphine. No ventilator, no surgery, no central line, no TPN or tube feedings, no CPR, no vasopressors, nothing. Not even if the odds of my complete recovery within 24 hours was 99%. Nothing, nothing, nothing; I want nothing done. I am an ICU nurse, and I would rather drop dead right this very second than ever risk being on the ventilator for 10 minutes. This may sound stupid, but this is my choice, by god, and I have the right to make this choice. I can only hope he’ll honor my requests if he’s called upon to decide on my behalf.
After 13 years of legal wrangling, Terri’s husband won the right to have her feeding tube removed, only to have his decision revoked by the governor. What does this mean for the fundamental right of patient autonomy? If, for example, I was in a car accident this afternoon and my husband ordered the removal of life support equipment in accordance with my wishes, would the governor have the right to step in and prevent this? If I was keeping my husband’s shell alive in accordance with his wishes, could the governor step in and order his feeding tube be removed?
In sum, I believe important medical decisions should be made by the patient him/herself, or by his/her legal proxy, not by any outsider. And certainly not to advance the career of a politician.
It may be a deeper and more fundamental symbolic comparison to the patient’s helpless state that the governor and legislators are drawing here. Perhaps I’m jumping the gun, but I see it as another brick in the wall to build outlawing abortion: patient unable to protect herself, helpless; and we allow someone to make a callous decision if she lives or dies? For shame! Someone must intercede!
…but maybe they really do mean best, and she’s not just a pawn in an anti-abortion agenda.
So sue me. I see strong similarities.
In any case, this is another strong example for signing a living will and making a lasting document in the event of trauma such as this. Obviously an oral agreement simply isn’t enough in this case.
FISH
Given that the religious right and a lot of right-to-lifers (Operation Rescue was mentioned in an earlier thread) are involved in this case, it occurs to me that it’s quite likely you’re onto something here. Ugh. Makes this whole thing that much worse if you ask me.