Terry Schiavo Case

[Cindy Hamlin]

My concern is where will it end? You signed a living will, but were you in the right frame of mind? And on and on....

It is my right to decide how I want to live and exist, not a congressperson, not a judge, not my family mine. I remember talking with my friend about becoming an organ donor. She asked, "what if your family disagrees?" Do they have a choice?

It is important that all people know your wishes and that they understand they are your wishes. God bless Terri's parents...but let her go already!

[Jana Lewis]

This has become a media circus..... I heard some "nurse" on the tele telling the interviewer that Terry can speak, and that she wishes not to die... Good Lord!

[chm2023]

My concern is where will it end? You signed a living will, but were you in the right frame of mind? And on and on....

It is my right to decide how I want to live and exist, not a congressperson, not a judge, not my family mine. I remember talking with my friend about becoming an organ donor. She asked, "what if your family disagrees?" Do they have a choice?

It is important that all people know your wishes and that they understand they are your wishes. God bless Terri's parents...but let her go already!

I don't know what the law is, but in practice, if you have signed on as an organ donor, the hospital will still seek your family's approval. I don't know if this is out of deference to their feelings or to avoid litigation or what.

[Spexvet]

"In Tallahassee, the state capital, Bush renewed his call for the Legislature to "spare Terri's life." The governor and the head of the state's social services agency also said they have filed a petition with a Pinellas County trial court seeking to take custody of Schiavo. It cites new allegations of neglect and challenges Schiavo's diagnosis as being in a persistent vegetative state based on the opinion of a neurologist working for the state. The doctor observed Schiavo at her bedside but did not conduct an examination of her"

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-03-23-schiavo-ruling_x.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

[Judy Canty]

Record all your "end of life" wishes in a living will, tell everyone in your family what you have done and then live your life.

[chm2023]

I've been trying to follow the legal issues here, seems to me it's fairly clear that the state court is the one with rightful jurisdiction in this case, not the Federal courts, Federal government or state legislature or executive branch.

The problem here as I see it (not in any sense claiming to have a full understanding of the law) is that folks who disagree with the state court decision(s) keep trying to circumvent it. Well I think we as a nation decided some time ago that we wanted to regulate ourselves "in a land of laws, not men". If you disagree with the law, there are remedies at hand (not withstanding the spectacularly un-Constitutional "law" Congress passed on Sunday); these remedies by design take time.

If you want to have fitful sleep, think about what change in the law would allow the parents or the government to keep people alive against their wishes or the wishes of their legal guardian. We had to make this decision with my father not long ago; I shudder to think what would have happened if someone decided my mother couldn't act on my father's behalf.

God rest her soul.

Here is something very peculiar to me: why do people who are so deeply religious have such a horror of death? And some of the most "secular" folks the opposite? Seems illogical.

[chm2023]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/LegalCenter...=609412&page=1

[Spexvet]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...n&sid=84439559


Supreme Court Rejects Terri Schiavo Case

[chm2023]

Last night Sean H came close to having his head explode over this. He kept trying to make the point that the courts were running wild, ignoring the Congressional edict etc. Greta van S kept calmly correcting him on his facts, e.g. the Congress did not order the courts to put the tube back in as he seemed to think, but gave standing to her parents and directed the fed court to hear the appeal. Dollars to donuts on Fox tonight he still makes the same "mis-statements".

The really bizarre thing was the statement from this Cheshire neurologist, who diagnosed Ms Schiavo from video and observing her for an hour, nothing so prosaic as an examination of course. Sean H referred to him as having been "nominated" for a Nobel prize. Whaaaaa...?????

[Robert Martellaro]

He said there was no doubt that Ms. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. "Her CAT scan shows massive shrinkage of the brain," he said. "Her EEG is flat - flat. There's no electrical activity coming from her brain."

From todays NY Times. The entire article is below.

A Diagnosis With a Dose of Religion
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and DENISE GRADY
Published: March 24, 2005

William P. Cheshire Jr., the Florida doctor cited by Gov. Jeb Bush yesterday in his announcement that he would intervene again in the case of Terri Schiavo, is a neurologist and bioethicist whose life and work have been guided by his religious beliefs.

Dr. Cheshire directs a laboratory at the Mayo Clinic branch in Jacksonville dealing with unconscious reflexes like digestion, and he is director of biotech ethics at the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, a nonprofit group founded by "more than a dozen leading Christian bioethicists," in the words of its Web site.

In an article last year in Physician magazine, published by the evangelical group Focus on the Family, Dr. Cheshire, 44, said doctors are too quick to declare that a patient is in a persistent vegetative state.

"I'm not sure the diagnosis is used consistently," he told Physician. "I am sometimes asked if a patient is in P.V.S., but it's only been a few days. By definition, you have to wait at least a month."

Yesterday, in an affidavit supporting a petition by the Florida Department of Children and Families in the case, Dr. Cheshire said it was more likely that Ms. Schiavo was in a "minimally conscious state."

"Although Terri did not demonstrate during our 90-minute visit compelling evidence of verbalization, conscious awareness or volitional behavior," he wrote, "yet the visitor has the distinct sense of the presence of a living human being who seems at some level to be aware of some things around her."

Mr. Bush called Dr. Cheshire a "renowned neurologist," but he is not widely known in the neurology or bioethics fields. Asked about him, Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, replied, "Who?"

Dr. Cheshire, who graduated from Princeton and earned a medical degree at West Virginia University, did not return calls to the Mayo Clinic seeking comment. The clinic said in a statement that his work on the Schiavo case was not related to his work at the clinic and that the state had invited his opinion. "He observed the patient at her bedside and conducted an extensive review of her medical history but did not conduct an examination," the statement said.

Dr. Caplan said that was not good enough. "There is just no excuse for going in and making any pronouncement about the state that Terri Schiavo is in unless you're going to go in and do some form of technologically mediated scanning that would overturn what's on the record already," he said.

Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist and medical ethicist at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has examined Ms. Schiavo on behalf of the Florida courts and declared her to be irredeemably brain-damaged, said, "I have no idea who this Cheshire is," and added: "He has to be bogus, a pro-life fanatic. You'll not find any credible neurologist or neurosurgeon to get involved at this point and say she's not vegetative."

He said there was no doubt that Ms. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. "Her CAT scan shows massive shrinkage of the brain," he said. "Her EEG is flat - flat. There's no electrical activity coming from her brain."

Dr. Cheshire entered the field of bioethics relatively late in his career. A profile of him on the Web site of Trinity International University, where he enrolled in the master's program in bioethics in 2000, states that he was "searching for how he should integrate his faith with his medical career." After getting the degree, he became an adjunct professor of bioethics there.

A search of his publication record in the online medical library PubMed yielded articles in medical journals, with a focus on headache pain, in particular trigeminal neuralgia, a painful disorder originating in a cranial nerve called the trigeminal. None of the papers dealt with persistent vegetative states.

His papers show a fondness for puns, as in the title of a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine about a patient whose fillings caused an electrical current that made her condition worse: "The shocking tooth about trigeminal neuralgia."

He was also the author, with others from the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, of a paper opposing stem cell research.
The center's Web site notes that he and his wife and four children are members of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Jacksonville and that he has done medical missionary work in Honduras and Siberia.

He has also written poetry, including "Exit Ramp," a poem about the movement to allow physician-assisted suicide that uses the metaphor of a highway off-ramp to warn of a different kind of slippery slope:

Such killing fast degenerates,
Despite concern for patients' best,
Into a plot that terminates
Without explicit prerequest.

[swrdfish]

am i missing something mom and dad gave little girl away for her to marry this guy?
but , this man won't let her wife to family to decide who decision is it someone give me answer?
i'll tell you who god will take her when the family no good husband walk away and let no medical or love one decide in gods hands last time i look god wants us to come homw when he decides not how long we use machine to keep them here. to be quite frank the man who started this site can tell us best and dont about you guys but, i believe hes the best to tell us about this since hes faced it first hand?
ty for the time to vent send hate mail to me ok, but i believe if love let her to go to god fight the family but plz dont start new family with another woman saying your doing this for love her.
:)

[Spexvet]

what?

[chm2023]

What really steams me is how the folks* who are butting into the Shiavo case keep piously referring to her long "torturous" death. First, any reputable doctor will tell you the brain damage Ms Shiavo has leaves her incapable of registering pain or any feeling--what exactly do people think a flat EEG indicates? ; second, regardless of the first point, drugs, usually morphine, will be administered as SOP; third, the humane way (to spare the relatives) to do this would be an injection. Guess who objects to this and has had it stopped in numerous court cases? Right, the radical Christian right*.

[Pete Hanlin]

I hope this is a wake up call re how the far religious right is seeking to hi-jack our democracy. Some of their propaganda is unbelievable, e.g. this woman will suffer an agonizing death. When did Florida turn into the gulag? She will be given narcotics as a matter of course, although the physicians agree she is beyond realizing pain.
Well, I suppose this case must serve as some sort of final self-confirmation that I am not an official card carrying member of the religious right (although I am religious and I do tend to the right).

I still think the primary problem here is the parents. In reality, their daughter has passed away, but- unfortunately for them- there remains a shell that looks very much like an alive daughter to them. I can understand why this presents a real dilemma for them- they want to hold on to any glimmer of a chance that their daughter may indeed still be with them. As such, I have a really hard time holding their actions against them.

I am having a harder time understanding the folks who seek to capitalize or encourage the delusions of Mrs. Schiavo's parents. I can understand the clouded thinking of someone who is too close to the situation to be objective, but the rest of these people need to take a serious look at what they're supporting here.

BTW, while I agree this is a case of "individual rights" (which many of those on the right have undeniably failed to grasp). I would note to my friends on the left who want to draw some convoluted similarity between this sad case and abortion that there simply is none. In one case, we're talking about someone who is past the ability to pursue "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Letting Mrs. Shiavo's body pass away is not going to hinder her freedom- that ended when her brain ceased to function. The mind of an unborn baby, on the other hand, still functions just fine and- left unmolested- will develop in due course. Ergo, the baby still has the potential (therefore the right) to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

To sum, while Mrs. Schiavo certainly has the personal right to indicate that- should her brain cease to function- she would prefer to pass away (which her body will naturally do without intervention). Conversely, however, no one has the right to decide that a baby doesn't have the right to live- which s/he will do in the absence of intervention. Right over your own life, yes- right over someone else's- no.

Well, perhaps I'm just sorta religious right- a casual attender, if you will.

[Judy Canty]

"It is more than just Terry Schiavo. This is a critical issue for people in this position and it is also a critical issue to fight that fight for life, whether it be euthanasia or abortion. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, one thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what's going on in America."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in his speech to the Family Research Council on Friday March 18

I certainly wouldn't describe Mr. DeLay as someone from the liberal "left", but it appears that he raised the issue during his remarks to a conservative religious organization. How much clearer must the parallels be drawn between this sad situation and the conservative agenda to overturn Roe v. Wade? A first trimester fetus is no more capable of sustaining life without assistance than is Mrs. Schiavo. Her husband has the legal and moral right to act in his wife's best interest. My daughters and I have the same moral and legal right to control our own reproductive lives. Mr. DeLay would have those rights removed with no concern beyond his own electability.

[Pete Hanlin]

I agree that the "right" doesn't get it when a connection is made between this case and abortion- that's why I said as much. However, I also believe the "left" is also wrong in any attempt to connect the two.

With all due respect, all women have complete control over their reproductive rights. You have the right to choose whether or not to have sex- which is why rape is a crime. Once you've decided to have sex, however, I don't see how your personal rights extend to the individual that resulted from your decision.

[Judy Canty]

I guess that would depend upon when I decide that "life" begins. My bottom line is that what affects me and my body is my decision and no one has the right to dictate that decision.

[shanbaum]

I agree that the "right" doesn't get it when a connection is made between this case and abortion- that's why I said as much. However, I also believe the "left" is also wrong in any attempt to connect the two.

It may be, Pete, that the left is merely pointing out that the right connects the two - or are some lefties doing something of which I'm not aware?

I would certainly find the religious rightists' position more compelling if they were consistent. I've got to hand that much to the Pope - he appears to advocate life consistently against the proponents of abortion, euthanasia, war, and the death penalty.

With all due respect, all women have complete control over their reproductive rights. You have the right to choose whether or not to have sex- which is why rape is a crime. Once you've decided to have sex, however, I don't see how your personal rights extend to the individual that resulted from your decision.

Well, you've said before that you think that a woman waives her liberty rights when she has sex, a view unique to Peteism. I find it a little hard to see how you wouldn't see that a woman's "personal rights" extend over her body - even if those rights might be compromised by the putative rights of a gestating inhabitant therein (to some debatable extent), I see no reason to believe that they are (or should be) entirely vitiated.

[Pete Hanlin]

Well, you've said before that you think that a woman waives her liberty rights when she has sex, a view unique to Peteism. I find it a little hard to see how you wouldn't see that a woman's "personal rights" extend over her body - even if those rights might be compromised by the putative rights of a gestating inhabitant therein (to some debatable extent), I see no reason to believe that they are (or should be) entirely vitiated.
I suspect that would be spelled "Petism," and I don't understand some of the tenets of Robertism either- which is what makes us individuals.

I wonder what would happen if science (with its propensity towards creating options that create moral fuzziness) developed a way to bring the unborn to term outside the womb. That would remove the whole "it affects my body" argument- now wouldn't it? At that point, would the mother claim the right to determine if the baby is given the opportunity to live?

It takes 36-40 weeks to bring a baby to term, after which there is nothing preventing the mother from turning the child over to adoption. Any transient "infringement" on liberty at that point is over.

Since we enjoy using the term "consistency," I would also question why the father doesn't have similar reproduction rights when it comes to parenting. Seems to me that- under the "right to liberty" argument, the father should be able to opt out of any responsibility any time before the 6th or 7th month of pregnancy (or whenever abortion is no longer an option). Not that I favor that at all (I think fathers should be held to greater responsibility), but it would seem consistent.

Meanwhile, the courts continue to deny this ill-begat crusade a hearing. The local news covered a family whose daughter suffered a similar fate about the same time as Mrs. Schiavo- noting that the husband in this case turned his wife over to the parent's care and sought a divorce. The mother indicated that he has been supportive of them during the past 15 years, and everyone seems to have "worked things out." The question being why this situation couldn't have been handled similarly (I'd like to believe its because Mr. Schiavo is trying to uphold his wife's wishes).

Anyway, if believing that abortion is wrong makes me a chauvanistic ogre according to Robertism, then I suppose you can begin referring to me as "Shrek."

[Judy Canty]

As soon as women are able to transfer half of the pregnancy experience to the father and of course half of the delivery experience, I'll give further thought to paternal rights. Until then, my body...my choices.

[Foveator]

I don't want to sound morbid, but remember Woody Allen's "Bananas", where they have managed to keep the Leader's nose alive and plan to clone him? (Until the nose got dropped under a road roller -it was very funny-). Imagine that the only viable part of Terry Schiavo was a kidney. Would they be doing this? If she is indeed brain dead and is surviving on impulses from her brain stem, with no chance of recovery, then they are essentially keeping her body parts alive. This is a huge emotional cost for all involved and monetarily, for whoever is paying the bill (state of Florida?) Multiply this situation by thousands nationwide and the dilemma is could we be better serving the patients who have a chance of recovering or keeping Terry's body parts alive?

When my dad died a few years ago, he had a stroke and was minimally responsive. The procedure in hospice involved keeping patients comfortable and pain free, while maintaining their dignity. There was no food or water. At no time did he appear hungry or thirsty. I think Terry's mom's statement, "Please don't let my daughter die of thirst" is one from a loving parent who has had this ordeal dragged out over more than a decade. Unfortunately, it's just some body parts left.

I have a tough time when our federal government gets involved in these cases that should be handled by the families, just as thousands of others around the country must handle every month. Had Terry been in any other country in the world when she suffered her brain injury, she would not still be here.

When Congress was called back into session, Senators and Representatives from around the country had to fly back to Washington. The President flew in from Crawford, Texas. The Supreme Court and the Florida Courts were called into special sessions. The taxpayers have now footed the bill for millions of dollars of additional expenses that at least 80% of the country thinks they should have no business interferring with. When Terri's body finally dies, the organs will be beyond transplantation, so the exercise in keeping the organs alive for the past decade will have been a success. Perhaps they should keep a small tissue sample alive in a Petri dish for the right to lifers and the mom. Then, someday in the future, she can be cloned. (This might sound like a Monty Python script except their scripts are more believable.)

Our country is really messed up when this can take front page space away from the living, who need our intervention for their survival. Imagine setting up a hospital with 10,000 (a year's worth of this type of situation) brain dead bodies being kept alive at $1,000 per day until one of their vital organs gives out and they die. Ten million dollars a day for what? Annually, that's over three and a half BILLION dollars, thousands of doctors and nurses and hospital beds that could be used to help the living recover and return as productive members of society. Wasting billions of dollars each year to keep bodies and organs alive isn't a sign of intelligent life. A feeding tube in a brain dead body body is not a natural situation. Take it one step further. Put her on a ventilator to keep her breathing and a pacemaker to keep her heart going. Where will it end? The people in charge should have their brain waves measured to make sure they haven't lost their sanity. This is not a religious issue. It's common sense.

[Robert Martellaro]

With all due respect, all women have complete control over their reproductive rights. You have the right to choose whether or not to have sex-

You believe that sex is strictly for procreation? Are you catholic? What if the birth control was ineffective? I suspect that if men had to carry and give birth, abortion would have been accepted since day one, instead of late 20th century.

which is why rape is a crime

It's a crime because it is an act of violence, false imprisonment, aggravated assault and battery.

[shanbaum]

Anyway, if believing that abortion is wrong makes me a chauvanistic ogre according to Robertism, then I suppose you can begin referring to me as "Shrek."

Actually, Pete, I too believe that abortion is wrong.*

However, I, like Chip, believe as strongly in liberty as I believe in life, and I am not so willing to sacrifice liberty as you are - so I am forced to balance the two against each other in deciding what I think the law should be with regard to abortion. That balancing analysis leads me to be fairly comfortable with where "the law" is right now, at least insofar as its Constitutionality is concerned.

*I suppose I should qualify that by saying I think it's way more wrong towards the end of a pregnancy than it is towards the beginning. I have roughly zero problem with RU-486, for example, with regards to its abortive effect. I am not in the least swayed by the life-begins-at-conception argument (it begins earlier; so what?). On the other hand, I have roughly zero problem with outright bans on abortion post-quickening; though, as will be discovered, not allowing exceptions for the mother to protect her own health throughout the pregnancy constitutes an unacceptable deprivation of her rights.

[Spexvet]

Well, I suppose this case must serve as some sort of final self-confirmation that I am not an official card carrying member of the religious right (although I am religious and I do tend to the right).

Pete, I’ve been trying to tell you….

Once you've decided to have sex, however, I don't see how your personal rights extend to the individual that resulted from your decision.

So, we’ve gone from no abortion in the third trimester, to no abortion after conception, to no abortion after you’ve decided to have sex, regardless of whether pregnancy has occurred? Pete, how do you feel about birth control? And do you have issues with abstinence – after all, if people don’t have sex, isn’t that pre-emptively aborting a potential child? ;)

[Spexvet]

As I understand current laws, aborting a fetus is the decision of the pregnant woman, and removing a feeding tube from a wife is the decision of the husband.

Nothing else matters.