I just can’t bear to blog on the Schiavo case right now because I think I might explode with rage if I don’t get a little time and distance from it. If I’m a rage-filled exploded shell of a woman, I won’t be able to take care of my children. Plus, eighteen thousand other liberal bloggers have already written on it. Maybe after the dust settles a little bit (when will that be?) I’ll write something on it.
But here’s an interesting thing: an ABC News poll shows that a majority (63%) of those polled support the removal of Ms. Schiavo’s feeding tube. In addition, an even larger majority (70%) say it’s inappropriate for Congress to get involved this way.
Whew! For a moment I thought we were all going crazy. But really it’s just our Republican-controlled government that’s going freaking crazy. But we already knew that, didn’t we?
Becca, that is the point. Her husband has not allowed any tests in years…
“Her husband has not allowed any tests in years…” The time for conducting those tests was in the first couple of months/years of her PVS—I think Mr. Schiavo waited those two years to see if anything would improve, do tests, etc. He stopped allowing tests, therapy, etc. because he (and all the doctors) realized it was freaking pointless. She is NOT going to improve with therapy because you cannot re-grow a brain! Once he realized that fact, he decided to stop prolonging his wife’s PVS and fulfill her wishes.
If she could eat with a spoon, they would have figured that out in the first few months of her condition. Her condition hasn’t changed in the past 15 years, therefore more “tests” are pointless. Ergo, her feeding tube is, in fact, a form of life support.
P.S. I just wanted to reiterate that this woman’s brain has literally turned to liquid. It’s not like she had a stroke and damaged some of the “wiring” up there in her brain. It’s not like she was in an accident and her muscles or bones just need time to heal. This is the equivalent of someone completely destroying his/her leg and having it amputated—except there’s no prosthetic brain that will allow Terri Schiavo to achieve consciousness again. She is not disabled, she is unable. No one is trying to starve someone who maybe just needs to be taught to feed him/herself (or whose brain allows them to be conscious, but they lack the motor skills to feed themselves). The upper part of this woman’s brain is literally liquid. She can’t be taught anything.
P.P.S. The Washington Post has a good editorial today that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the issue: A Damaging Intervention
Hoosier,
You’re just wrong. There were a number of extensive, court-ordered tests carried out of Schiavo.
For instance:
“[Prof. Jay] Wolfson was appointed by a Florida court in the fall of 2003 to be Schiavo’s guardian ad litem, or guardian at law, to deduce Schiavo’s best interests and represent neither her husband nor her parents but Terri Schiavo herself.
In the end, after long hours at Schiavo’s bedside and after poring over 30,000 pages of legal documents, Wolfson concluded Schiavo was indeed in a permanent vegetative state.
He was appointed Schiavo’s guardian after the Florida Legislature passed “Terri’s Law” in 2003, a move that allowed doctors to reinsert her feeding tube, despite a judge’s ruling that it should be removed. The law has since been struck down as unconstitutional.
Wolfson, who has a law degree and a doctorate and is a distinguished service professor of public health and medicine at the University of South Florida, was asked to decide whether Schiavo’s feeding tube should be removed and whether more tests should be done to assess her ability to swallow.
He scoured 13 years’ worth of legal documents and extensively interviewed Schiavo’s husband, Michael, and her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. His time with Schiavo was spent trying to determine whether she was aware of and interactive with the world.
…
But court documents said Schiavo’s cerebral cortex, where reason and emotions are housed, had degenerated to fluid. So Wolfson set about trying to determine whether Schiavo’s noises and jerks were merely reflexive or whether they indicated something more.
He played music for her, he held her hands, squeezing them, and he stroked her hair and face.
“I would beg her, ‘Please, Terri, help me,’” he said. “You want to believe there’s some connection. You hope she’s going to sit up in bed and say, ‘Hey, I’m really here, but don’t tell anybody.’ Or, ‘I’m really here, tell everybody!’”
But Schiavo never made eye contact. When Wolfson visited her when her parents were there, she never made eye contact with them either, he said. And for all of Wolfson’s pleadings and coaxing, he never got what he most wanted: a sign.”
Hoosier Texan:
“Pauly, I made no such argument. I never brought Bush into this. I am not big on the federal gov’t getting involved in most cases like this. But I feel his is different only because many say she can be rehabilitated. Problem is, no on has tried for years.
Please don’t accuse me of an argument I haven’t made.”
Add me to that, Pauly.
~Kevin
So, everyone, let’s assume Terry will be allowed to die.
Why starve her to death? Regardless of whether or not she feels pain or suffering, aren’t there quicker and more humane ways to achieve the desired end result, which is death?
My apologies, the religious statement was a little misleading. Most people seem to back Bush on his moral convictions. You Kevin are siding with Bush and supporting his decision to intervene in this most personal of all matters, the death of a loved one being decided by family. I could only surmise that you were siding with Bush and the other republicans from what you have recently posted. The overlaying factor being “if you are to error, than error on the side of life.†But as I pointed out that Bush and the republicans have constantly NOT sided with life but rather with their pocketbooks. Again I point out that this is no different. This is a great photo op and another red herring for any other inconsistencies that may arise from this present administration.
SO I just figured that somewhere (although you never said it) you sided with their decision to keep this poor, poor woman alive out of religious convictions and to stay constant with past similar situations. My bad and I apologies. Still, it dos not hold steady to past similar circumstances where the media was not involved and the patients were being looked after by people who had little money.
Hoosier I lumped you in there simply because you just said that you agreed with Kevin. So I figured what ever Kevin said or implied, you did as well. If this was not the case that be careful with whom you side with.
With all that said, Becca & Tracy. Thanks for your medical input but unless somebody actually becomes a vegetable and then comes out of it, how can anybody really ever know if they feel anything or not? I’m willing to side with the people who are modern day experts on the matter…but you never know. People just openly accept it because the opposite is unimaginable. What if you could still think, but yet in a dream state? Could hear friends and family but not communicate back. Maybe not even knowing what’s going on but still knowing something! Worse yet…what if you could feel ant not express the pain that you are feeling!
I bring this up for 2 reasons. The first is, people of trust or care givers tell us lay people what we want to hear to help protect us. I had a friend who right out of high school hit a truck head on while riding a motorcycle. The doctors told the parents, who told us, that he felt nothing. Death was instantaneous. At the funeral I talked to the actual truck driver himself. Death was NOT instantaneous but rather he lingered for several minutes before death. He was awake! MAN! I could have lived a long happy life never knowing that.
The other is, if it turns out that the republicans can not stop this woman’s right to her death, than why not offer a quick and painless death that they offer to any other state ordered death sentence. I know, I know, she has committed no crime and the referral to her as in any capacity is just sad. But now that there has been a court order to reinstate the feeding tube, than there will be a court order to reverse it. If the republicans and Bush really and truly cared for this woman, they would offer the same painless release they offer to so many that they put death for crimes committed. Or would this be acknowledging that euthanasia is a viable outlet in some circumstances.
But like I said, they are not interested in this woman’s pain & suffering…or even her life. This is a good photo-op and another red herring.
Pauly
I agree with Pauly for maybe only the second time in my life. This is BS. If they are going to let her die, do it humanely.
And Cook, you are partially right. The last judge allowed 3 of the 16 tests requested by the family. She has NEVER had na MRI. Becca, I don’t know where you are coming from. Her husband stopped any rehab or testing after only two years. You trying to tell me that science and technology has not come in further in the past 15-20 years. You are very uniformed.
Her husband also has never been able to explain the blunt force trauma to her skull or broken back and various other broken bones she mysteriously got the first 52 weeks of her condition.
JM Cook, it’s hypocritical to have the stance you have on the death penalty and your definition of torture and allow this woman to die this way. I think Pauly has made more sense than anyone on his views and statements on this. God, I can’t believe I said that!
Hoosier, you wrote: “Becca, I don’t know where you are coming from. Her husband stopped any rehab or testing after only two years. You trying to tell me that science and technology has not come in further in the past 15-20 years. You are very uniformed.”
Hoosier, I’m not a doctor (yet), but I’m fairly certain that doctors haven’t figured out how to turn a liquefied brain back into a functioning organ. I dunno, though—perhaps I missed that spectacular medical breakthrough?
I’m done with this anyway, ’cause you know what—I shouldn’t even have to worry about this. Whether her husband is/isn’t a jackass…whether her parents are/aren’t selfish and delusional…it’s really their own family tragedy, and it shouldn’t be any of my business. I’m pissed that the federal government has taken this from an “oh, how tragic” evening news story to yet another bullshit “culture of life” issue. And at this point, sitting here at my laptop and getting pissed at YOU isn’t doing me (or anyone else) a damn bit of good. I’m not going to change anyone’s mind. Besides, if anyone’s mind needs to be changed, it’s not some random person reading this forum, it’s someone in the government with some actual power to change this crap.
So, on that note, I’m out!
Hoosier,
It’s not hypocritical if her cerebral cortex has, oh, TURNED TO LIQUID.
Pauly: No worries.
On that note, I’ve said all I need to say on this topic… for now at least.
No worries Kevin. Like Becca this topic has been done to death. In the end it’s not a question of who should die and who should live. The government has made it quite clear that the ones with money and the ones who can give a political advantage will live and the ones who don’t die.
Hoosier, don’t sell your self short. You’ve agreed with me and admitted you were way off topics countless times, not just 2 time. Your growing…you suck ass…but your growing.
This is my last Schiavo comment on this thread, I swear. Then I’m done.
I just wanted to respond to Hoosier Texan’s point about an MRI never being done. Hoosier Texan, do you know what an MRI is for? Do you know what medical information it provides, compared to a CT scan, or a PET scan? Do you know what the indications and contraindications are? Do you even know what these tests are? I can’t remember all the answers to these questions, and I’ve learned them in the past. I’d have to go look it up. People spend years studying and learning this stuff.
Leave it to the experts who use these tests day in and day out and actually know waht the advantages and disadvatages of each kind of test are. Medical tests like this don’t give you the answer printed out on a piece of paper. They each might contribute a certain piece of information. Then you take all the pieces of information you’ve gotten and put them together to complete the puzzle. Sometimes the puzzle is easy to put together, like in Ms. Schiavo’s case, and sometimes it’s difficult.
Here’s what Dr. Cranford has to say about an MRI in Ms. Schiavo’s case. He’s one of the examining neurologists who was on the original Schiavo trial.
You can read more about it here.
What IS this “pingback” thing?
If anyone cares, a further comment on William Hammesfahr, who according to Kevin in comment 14, “is up for the Nobel prize in this area”. In fact, he refers to himself as having been nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1999 because his congressman wrote a letter to the Nobel committee “nominating” him. Unfortunately, the rules of the Nobel Academy say that they decide who has the authority to make nominations, and this congressman is NOT on their list. Therefore, Hammesfahr is no more a Nobel nominee than Kevin would be if I wrote a letter to Sweden saying I nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Incredibly, a large number of media outlets, including the the talking heads at Fox News and CNN, have cited this guy as a Nobel nominee, clearly without bothering to check the facts even a little. Maybe Dan Rather wasn’t so unusual.
I am not a doctor (or med student), so it is hard for me to be be too righteous about what is the truth when medical experts disagree; however, I have to say that a guy who repeatedly and strenuously purports to be a Nobel nominee. when he is not, loses a little bit of credibility in my eyes.
Incidentally, thank you Tracy for both some very informative content and an extremely refreshing writing style.
Why the big disagreement?
There are only two major issues here:
Does the husband have the right to “pull the plug”? Is he next of kin? Then, I think it is obvious he has more right than the parents. After all, she is an adult, not a child.
Did he waive those rights by having something to do with her “accident” as claimed by her brother and several others? Sure, but there does not seem to be enough evidence of that. That does not mean he was not involved. There was very little evidence of a solid nature against Scott Peterson, and he was convicted as well.
The other real point is that if you are going to kill her body, is starvation the best way to do it? I’m shocked by those who state without question that her remaining shell, which certainly may have 10%, or 20% of it’s higher levels left (not much, but certainly not all) has absolutely no ability to feel pain. Why not just give her a lethal injection and be done with it? Is that too difficult to swallow for some reason? If there is any chance that she has still some pain sensitivity left, the starvation route is simply barbaric.
I’ve been working at homes for severaly disabled children, and I think we should definitely euthanize most of them immediately.
Of course, most of the comments by the authors on this site, and now their wives etc. show that they should probably get the same fate soon, to stop the nonsense.
Toshio,
Yikes.
Bob
Toshio,
Although your comments indicate that I really should do otherwise, I will address your points seriously.
I’m sort of torn about the starvation vs. lethal injection point. On the one hand, I understand that there is a moral difference between letting someone who is gravely ill die, like Ms. Schiavo, and actively ending someone’s life, say by lethal injection. Everyone has to die, everyone is going to die, and at the time at which death is imminent, they are sort of by definition very sick, so letting a very sick person die is not, shall we say, going against the natural way of things. But ending their life “prematurely” seems wrong somehow. I put prematurely in quotes because in a case in which medical intervention is futile but has been carried out anyway, I’m not sure I know what premature means. On the other hand, it would be much quicker and potentially less painful to take an active role and simply hasten what nature will do anyway. I’m not convinced that this applies in Ms. Schiavo’s case, because her higher brain capacity is so very limited. My understanding is that people in persistent vegetative states cannot feel pain. (Pauly brought up some interesting questions about that.) I haven’t decided this one for myself yet.
The concept of medical futility is very important here. Can medical techonology help this person? What constitues “help” is determined by one’s values. A lot of people think that in a case like this, medical intervention is helpful when it can restore some level of function and capacity. Others believe that simply maintaining life, at whatever level of consciousness, makes medical intervention helpful. So once again it comes back to what the patient would have wanted. Not me, and not you (until we’re the patient.) We all know the arguments about what Ms. Schiavo would’ve wanted.
When the most that medicine can offer an unconscious person is maintanence, I often find it helpful to ask myself what would happen to this person without it. If the answer is that they would die, then letting them die (in my value system) is simply going along with the sad but natural way of things. Of course, I recognize that not everyone shares my value system. But in the case of Ms. Schiavo, nutrition is certainly a medical intervention in a way that it obviously isn’t for conscious people. She gets it through a tube that goes straight through her abdominal wall into her stomach. Putting the tube there is a medical procedure. But, just to be clear, I don’t believe that feeding is the real issue, as I’ve said before. You can see my previous comments for that.
As for your other comments about euthanizing severely disabled people and the authors of this site and their wives: you sound nuts. Are you nuts? Either you are advocating for a policy not unlike Hilter’s in which he wanted to “clean up” the German gene pool, or you are just sarcastically going to an extreme to make a point. That point would be that it’s a slippery slope and once we think it’s okay to kill people like Terri Schiavo, then it’s too easy to kill all sort of other people, including the authors of this site and their wives. I suspect your comments really mean the latter and you are not nuts. But if you really think we should euthanize people with severe disabilities, then I take serious issue with you.
Bob S-K,(do you sell suits, BTW?) what’s your problem?
Do you have anything constructive to say, other than “yikes”, which could mean anything.
Tracy, for a supposed person who works in the medical field in some way, you say some amazingly stupid things. “… letting someone who is gravely ill die, like Ms. Schiavo, ..’ She’s been in there for something 10 years, and your remarks seem to indicate she’s “gravely ill” From what? She wasn’t “gravely ill” until you stopped giving her body food and water. My father-in-law had a stroke and couldn’t eat or speak. He had to be fed. By this same logic, we can say that if we didn’t feed him, he would become “gravely ill”. He never regained speech until cancer finally took him, but I won’t tell you how long he lived in a state where he required feeding. Would he have rather died? Perhaps, he couldn’t communicate that. I guarantee you that he had some level of (albeit scrambled perhaps)thought going on in there. I’m sure he wouldn’t have appreciated being starved to death if he did want to die.
“They say” she cannot feel pain. Really? How do you know really for sure. One thing is sure, each medical case, while having some statistical correlation to others, is unique. The fact that 90% of people in similar conditions to her don’t feel pain (How do we know, I wonder again?, who did the torture testing?) does not mean her individual case is not important or special.
If she’s by definition not really there enough to be called a “human being” anymore (if she was, I guess we wouldn’t be letting her starve to death) then what’s the big deal of doing the humane thing? It’s what do to to dogs and cats, and they’re not human either.
‘medical intervention is helpful when it can restore some level of function and capacity.” Let’s take your point and apply it fairly. In the home I’m talking about, kids with severe physical and mental problems are routinely kept alive. Do you kid yourself that there is anything “natural” about that? They’d be dead in a week too, if we didn’t intervene. They will never grow up to be at all “normal”. Don’t you get it? Is it different because they are children and never got the chance to state how they wanted to live their lives. I’ve got no proof Ms. Shiavo did either I guess, just someone’s words that she did, and someone else’s that she didn’t.
Argue that I’m nuts all you want. I might be, and those who are on the far other end probably think you are murderously nuts also. But of course you think your stance is the one that makes sense. The criminally insane often do think that about themselves. (nothing against you personally, of course) Nice to bring in a Hitler reference, although it is out of place. My comments obviously didn’t have anything to do with cleaning up a gene pool, or killing fags, or Jews, or Gypsies. Just removing the waste of care for those people who will never improve, never become productive citizens, have no chance of living on their own. Please tell me again why we feed them? There are plenty of viable, starving children in the world we could help in the same beds. Tell me again how it’s wrong to “let the natural thing happen”.
Is the whole thing a slippery slope? That’s not my point to make; that’s so obvious that it hardly bears saying. That’s why I jokingly suggest you don’t have much more than a stub of a brain stem either, and could get the same fate.
You say you have children. You haven’t got the capacity to explain to them about “lies of omission”. Why it’s just as wrong to not share an important truth as it is to proactively speak a falsehood.
But yet, thinking about the difference between “letting” her die and “helping” her death has you somehow torn. Face the reality: THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE.
If you are going to do it, JUST DO IT. Don’t be so mamby-pamby. It’s not enabling you to somehow straddle a line between the right and wrong and feel somewhat good about yourself.
You can’t have it both ways. If she’s a human still, you can’t explain to me in humanistic terms why it’s OK to let he die when she needs outside assistance. If you want to say the human part of her has left the building, then it’s time to just demolish the house. Get on with it, you wussies.
this is some bullshit
You guys are right on.