Wrong. We are talking about a tube that has been surgically implanted into her abdomen, connected directly to her stomach, and then hooked up to a machine which pumps in nutritional fluid. Which is NOT comprised of regular food, or water. Not soup, Ensure, or other liquids. It’s a direct mixture of chemicals that she’d need to survive-sodium, potassium, etc.
It’s not just “plain old food and water.”
Well, what would you propose instead? A bullet in the head? A guillotine? 10,000 bombs dropped from a Stealth Fighter overhead?
Too bad medical science disagrees with you:
for those who keep on insisting that this is a ‘cruel and unusual death’, how do you answer me and the thousands of others who have authorized the same treatment to loved ones? I sat by his bedside for his final days, from the time the tubes were taken off til he breathed his last. He did not suffer. I was there. I slept (sort of) in the bed next to his. I woke every two hours when the staff turned him. I woke every time. I woke when he made any noise at all. I was there. He did not suffer. are you saying that I and all the other thousands of family members who have authorized this action actively wanted our loved ones to suffer? that we saw them suffer and did it anyhow? you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
it happens every fucking day in the world. are all of our collective experiences wrong on the basis of what you assume to be true?
ask some one who’s been there.
I have.
ask me.
Hey, dumbfuck, what seems to be escaping you is that Terri said she didn’t want any feeding tubes. It doesn’t matter what you, in your ignorance, believe about death by dehydration. It doesn’t even matter that she has no cerebral cortex and is incabable of suffering. All that matters is that the government does not have the right to force a tube into her gut against her will. Why is that so hard for you idiots to grasp?
Maybe they just don’t give a fuck, so long as they can keep the power trip going, so long as they can feed off her like leeches and to fuel their own ignorant self righteousness.
I bow to your superior knowledge in these matters, Dio, and certainly I don’t know much about the human brain…but if this is the case why is she being given morphine? And how was it determined that it should be administered?
Contrary to some earlier reports, she isn’t on a morphine drip but she was administered a couple of low doses as a purely academic sop to the family. The part of her brain that registers pain no longer exists. The morphine is given anyway simply to reassure the family. There is actually no medical need for any soporifics. It’s just a way to humor the parents.
Good enough. Thanks, Dio.
For at least a week, and I believe longer, the three right-wing radio hosts I most listen to (Beck, Rush, and Roth) have been referring to her fairly regularly as “Terri Schindler Schiavo.”
As a registered Republican who has been disgusted with certain party representatives for the past 4-5 years (fuck all that is Bush), and one who is determined to get his two cents in, let me just say this:
While the Schiavo case may cause some erosion, it’s drops in the bucket. Republicans have shown themselves very capable of worming their way out of compromising facts. However, if on top of this case, the Republicans eat themselves and shit themselves out again over social security, and get slammed on drilling in ANWR (this looks like it could happen). And IF, and this is a big “if”, Canada declares war on us for outsourcing their citizens to be tortured. Maybe not fullscale war, maybe if they just threatened strategic bombing with regime change. Then the Republican party will collapse.
Seriously though, if I was in charge of our neighbor to the North, I would invade the U.S. just because no one would expect it. Bet I could raise a coalition ten times better than Bush had for Iraq.
Let’s examine this more closely, shall we? I know you can do it! Actually, I’m not sure you can, since we’ve been over this many times, but let’s review anyway.
While Terri was alive, she was not able to consume “plain old food and water”. She could not feed herself, she could not even be fed by someone because she could not swallow and would have choked. She could not feel hunger, or think about food, or realize instinctively that she needed to eat, or have any thought or feeling whatsoever, because that part of her brain was dead. She had to have a nutrient solution delivered by tube into her stomach.
Here is a blog with a photo of Terri’s CAT scan, followed by commentary by a neurophysiology researcher. He correctly points out that even someone totally ignorant of neuroscience can see that Terri’s brain image is drastically different from a normal brain image. He then points out that to a trained eye, the damage to the cerebellum is near total, even considering the lower resolution of the old CAT scan technology.
So, the terrible and difficult truth is that Terri was reduced to a mere shell of a person, capabable of no more than autonomous functions and random movements. In cases like this, withholding the feeding tube is allowing her to die. Maybe that’s cruel, but I believe it is far crueler to keep alive a woman who will never be able to do, think, or feel anything whatsoever.
As for your “VC tax collectors”, setting aside the issue of whether deliberately killing 20,000 people outside of an actual battle is a good thing, there are some serious questions about just how many of those people were even VC members. This is from Atticus Finch’s link back in that other thread:
Let me put it to you bluntly, if you are incapable of comprehending the entirety of my statement: Your views of life and death are totally fucked up. According to you, we should have kept Terri alive no matter what because, gosh darnit, it was just the right thing to do, but killing a bunch of villagers is also the right thing to do, because even if they weren’t all goddamn commie bastards, well, tough shit.