She is not on life support as far as I know, and she resonds to stimuli so how can she be brain dead? I thought brain dead meant needing life support and not responding to stimuli.
She’s not brain dead, she’s brain-damaged. She is able to breath on her own, but every doctor who actually examines her agrees that she is in a persistent vegetative state, and is not able to respond to any stimuli whatsoever.
This part is a fabrication of her parents. None of the court appointed doctors found her responsive to any stimulus. What throws people is that her eyes are open, moving and blinking, and they confuse that with consciousness, rather than involuntary reflex from the brain stem.
Terry’s hindbrain still functions. This is the part closest to the stem that keeps our bodily functions going. When she had her heart attack, her cereberal cortex was starved for oxygen and died. This is the part of the brain where memory and cognitive function and advanced motor functions stay. Terry Schiavo is alive, much like a potted plant is alive. There is enough brain function to keep her body alive with some assistance but everything she ever was, ceased to be over a decade ago. Sometimes doctors do things just because they can rather than consider if they should and the next of kin are left with false hopes.
In 1995, I was brain damaged in an automobile accident. The ER physician put me on a respirator, it was the only way I could survive. After 4 days my wife ordered all life support removed. As she told me, “I put it in God’s hands, you would live or you would die, his will.” My right frontal lobe had suffered trauma, something that would heal. As it was, I was unable to functon as an individual for 3 years, I lived in hell for half a decade, but I got better. Terry’s brain was deprived of oxygen beyond the point of no return. There is a big difference, there can be no recovery.
Terry Schiavo has been a political football in a state where a large part of the population is retired and going to die soon. It is all very sad and disgraceful.