Well, I stand corrected. That’s what I get for listening to radio pundits with agendae.
The State of Florida and several groups (lumped as ‘right wing,’ ‘conservative’ or ‘religious’) are making an attack on the institution of marriage.
She is married. Her husband has the right and the duty to make medical decisions for her while she is incapacitated. This is a long-established fact.
Her parents have enlisted several groups into an effort to undermine the husband’s decision. The cold fact is that the parents have no legal standing in this matter and so have gone outside the law, to public opinion and politics to get what they want.
They are legally and morally wrong.
Paul,
Michael Schiavo no longer has the right and duty to make medical decisions for Terri. He turned over that right when he placed it in the courts hands to decide. If he changed his mind about the feeding tube…wanting it to remain…he could do nothing about it. It will still be removed as per court order.
regards,
widdley
Hey Abbie, are you married? How would you like it if you were in a vegetative state, needed a machine to breathe, and your husband wanted to keep you alive but got overruled by your parents? This case is no different in my opinion.
When I married my wife (who I will never divorce and never cheat on), I made her my partner and she is the person who is going to make decisions if something happens to me. Not my parents, not my sister, not some state legislature (hopefully), but my wife. Fuck you for trying to weaken the institution of marriage with your damn opinions.
Master, Terri’s cerebral cortex is entirely gone - I have no medical knowledge but it’s apparently the part of the brain that processes sensory input and is necessary for brain functions such as memory, language and even consciousness. Without it, she will never be more than what she currently is - a braindead body in a bed, capable only of very basic functions such as breathing.
That is, no medical treatment on Earth could bring this woman back to normal or to any state other than a breathing body in a bed. They’d have to rebuild large sections of her brain.
Therefore, all doubt is gone. It would be pointless for the doctors to act.
OK, you know about his girlfriend he’s with and waiting to marry once she dies, right? Right? :dubious: She ain’t exactly new to the scene.
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever fucking known a person on life support? I did once. For almost 30 years I called her “Mom”. As the next of kin it was up to me to decide when the efforts were no longer helping. She was dying of cancer so it was a matter of time.
You want to start a discussion on hard decisions? I’ll hijack the motherfucker as one of the few Dopers that actually held someone’s life in my hands. Keeping mom alive had absolutely no bearing on whether or not she’d get better. All the technology available wouldn’t help. She was going to die.
Now let’s take Terry’s case. There are a few things to keep in mind.
1.) “She’s a non-responsive vegetable.” OK, maybe so. Hell, I’m almost willing to concede it because of the green beer. What harm is being done keeping her alive? She’s not in pain and has no brain function to know she’s in that state, so she’s not suffering, right?
2.) Living wills have been a part of US law for years. If she was so adamant about the situation, why not look to her lack of signing one instead of taking his word that she wanted to die without ever mentioning it to family?
3.) The husband ( :rolleyes: ) is already shacked up with the new, improved future wife. He obviously doesn’t give a shit about his marriage vows, so why hasn’t there been a filing for divorce? I’m sure fucking the new broad confirms his love for his wife. Why not just let her family deal with the situation?
Fuck it, I think I see a new Pit thread in the near future.
And, of course, I forgot to add this portion to my previous post.
From almost everything I’ve seen and read, those (I’m trying to be civil here) that want her to pass away are the same that claim stem-cell research can cure her ailments.
Why not keep her alive if she isn’t suffering in the hope that someday there will be a procedure to wake her from her sleep?
Maybe she isn’t worth keeping alive, I don’t know. It seems to be too personal an issue to let “outsiders” to make the choice.
Which provides her with food and water. Are you being kept alive artificially by eating and drinking? I guess we’d better off you too then.
The judge won’t allow the family to attempt to feed her through the mouth. So if she’s killed by her husband, we’ll never know if she could have lived without the tube.
OK, let’s look at this from this point of view. Terri Schiavo is beyond repair. The best thing to do is to let her die. Every time Michael seems to gain a victory, at the last minute, some form or another of government steps in and stops what’s happening. Why? Well, the greiving parrents factor in somewhat, but what factors in a lot more, is what they’re using to back up their claims that Terri can recover, their own doctors. Because they have medical doctors saying that Terri can be revived, judges, legislaters, a govener, and now, apparently, even the Congress, as well as members of the general public, don’t see this as a cut and dry case. Because of this, the whole debate gets drawn out over a very long period of time. But Terri Schaivo is brain dead, and letting her go would be the most humane thing to do. How do you speed up the process and get more people on your side? You have to somehow take the parents doctors out of the equation. Oh sure, it won’t convince everyone, but it’ll make it a hell of a lot harder for her parents to convince government officials that Terri can be revived. It won’t look like (to most people) the medical community is divided any more if the parents doctors look Terri over and say that she is incurable. As long as those doctors aren’t allowed to examine her themselves and try to treat her, they’ll most likely keep saying that they could do something if only they were allowed. Letting them work on her would let them learn for themselves that they are powerless. Sure, the parents would probably still go on fighting, and they might find a few sympathetic ears, but with no real backing in the medical community like they have now, the decision to take Terri off of life support would happen a lot sooner and this whole mess could be over with.
Also, think about this. Letting them try to work on her poses no risk. There’s nothing to loose and everything to gain.
That’s my 2 cents anyway.
So, what, ***15 years ** * has not been long enough? Give them another month or two? If “therapy” is all she needed, what have they been doing the last 15 years?
Watching Michael refuse to let her have therapy. He won’t even let her have penicillin for an infection, or have her teeth brushed for over 10 years (they had to remove 5 teeth last year because of that).
There IS no therapy which can restore a cerbral cortex.
Cite?
Heh. This confirms my argument of stem-cell researchers trying to reverse brain damage.
Any stem-cell research Kerry voters care to tell us why she should die? It seems that experiments will be needed to help anyone.
I wonder if you could get a Physical Therapist to tell us all that those paralyzed wouldn’t benefit from therapy. Your quoted post didn’t say anything about psychologists or psychiatrists.
How about because those were her wishes? Doesn’t that count for something?
And stem cell research is no applicable here anyway. Stem cells can’t grow back a cerbral cortex anymore than they can grow back a leg.
Psychology and Psychiatry would have no application to this situation. She doesn’t have a psyche. She doesn’t have a cerbral cortex. The part of the brain which is responsible for consciousness and sensory perception is not just damaged in Schiavo, it’s completely gone. She’s not going to get it back. Brains don’t grow back just like arms don’t grow back.
Three different sets of experts have testified about this including an independent set appointed by the court. Only the ones who were paid by the parents have supported their side. This has gone on for 15 years and the parents have had every opportunity and then some to throw every paid for quack and whacko theory they could think of at the court, There aren’t any unturned stones here. The woman’s brain is liquified. It’s gone and it isn’t coming back. There is no moral justification for keeping her body artificially alive against her own wishes.
Actually, I’m curious about this. Hypothetically, we could simply clone a bunch of stem cells, drop them into the cavities where her brain used to be, and with the right chemical signals, guide them into growing new bits of brain, right?
Of course, they would be new bits of brain. Even if it worked, it would be like inserting a new hard drive into an old computer: after the head crash, your data is gone forever.
OK, I’ll cede the argument of restoring her cerebral cortex. Obviously memories can’t be grown, and apparently neither can new tissue that would hold memory.
But do you have any cite of her saying that she wants death in this circumstance? Or are you basing it all on what is said by a man that can’t wait to re-marry?
It was the testimony not only of her husband but of several others in court. The court believed the testimony and has basically found that this was Terri’s wish.
Assuming it would work, you’re exactly right: We’d be creating an infant in her physically decayed body. The new person wouldn’t be Terri any more than any other infant would be, and forcing her atrophied and aged shell of a body on a new human being is wrong.
Those who want stem cells to fix Terri aren’t going to get Terri back. Any stem cells placed into her cranium would be wasted, and that is a real tragedy.
What’s the harm done by necrophilia? Or selling someone’s body parts? I mean, they’re dead, who cares?
We have this notion of respect for the dead, and that includes the dying and the permanently vegetative. Medical ethics require that we try to implement the medically reasonable choice that she would make if she were able to make it. The courts have weighed the evidence and they found the evidence “clear and convincing” that Terri would not have wanted to go on like this.
Who has a living will at age 20? I’d be absoutely shocked if 1% of American 20-year-olds has a living will, and I’d also be shocked if more than a quarter of them have ever had a serious discussion on this matter with anyone.
We have to have a mechanism to make these decisions in the absence of a living will or of clearly-expressed wishes. Michael Schiavo has worked within that mechanism, and even let the courts make a determination of Terri’s wishes when it was his right to make the decision unilaterally.
That’s easy to say, with 20/20 hindsight. There is no way he could have envisioned this dragging out for as long as it has. His wife was dead, or at least the part of her that made her who she was was dead, and he set about accepting that and trying to go on with his life while he dealt with what should have been formalities as far as carrying out her wishes. None of us know what we would have done in his situation, and who knows what he would have done if he had it to do over.