DescentBB

Will, I totally agree that injecting her with a overdose of horse tranquiliser would be quicker (and more humane), pulling the tubes is a Pontius Pilot method of washing ones hands and saying "Let Gods will be done".

Tetrad wrote:The family wants to keep her "alive" even though the courts have decided (on two seperate occasions no less) that her wishes were to not be on life support if she were to be in a vegitative state. Don't you find that a little odd?

The husband is trying to carry out her wishes. And I'm sure his own, as he'd like to get on with his life.

She is NOT in a vegitative state! She is disabled. And there have been people who were in the same position as Terri and recovered and managed to live productive lives! And the husband's motivation needs to be called into question. He wants to cremate her right away and not allow for an autopsy, on top of that he already has a girlfriend for a number of years now, the suspicion that he wants to get rid of her dispite the pleads of her parents needs to be called into question. Who are we to judge that someone's quality of life deems it necessary that they must die because of a DISABILITY?

TopWop as I understand it when she first was disabled she was possibly in a state where she could recover, and to what degree is up for debate....
Whether her husband neglected to provide a path to recovery at that time or not is unclear. Regardless, she is now apparantly beyond hope.

Top Wop, I don't think a "persistent vegetative state" is a disability.

Top Wop wrote:She is NOT in a vegitative state! She is disabled. And there have been people who were in the same position as Terri and recovered and managed to live productive lives!

I'm pretty sure you're wrong on all points here. Yes, Terri has a working brain stem which accounts for all reflexive actions, i.e. being able to breathe on her own. However her cerebral cortex which accounts for all higher level thinking has atrophied to the point where it's just fluid now.

(comment retracted)

This brings up the question: Should we let Schiavo die, then prosecute her husband for murder for not pursuing any options that might have helped?

If her brain has atrophied into a pile of mush, she's dead. However, if her husband had made an effort to have her revived, her brain might not have turned into mush. He omitted to do the only thing that might have saved Schiavo's life, which was well within his power; and thus could be prosecuted for murdering his wife.

Stryker, I'm pretty sure they would have looked for stuff like that over the past dozen years or so. They've done everything but try to cyrogenically freeze her until they could figure out what to do.

Stryker wrote:However, if her husband had made an effort to have her revived, her brain might not have turned into mush. He omitted to do the only thing that might have saved Schiavo's life, which was well within his power; and thus could be prosecuted for murdering his wife.

Star Telegram wrote:Schiavo underwent more than three years of rehabilitative therapy after her collapse in 1990, and her husband took her to a California center in late 1990 to have an experimental device implanted in her brain in hopes of stimulating activity.

Stryker, did you even read Tetrad's copy-pasted sequence of events? If you had, you'd know that your post is completely erroneous.

I'm pretty sure he exhausted all possible resources within the first 2-3 years of her stroke. I mean sure, maybe he was partly responsible for her eating disorder that in turn caused the stroke, who knows. What I do know is that after 15 years she isn't coming back.

It isn't like she is retarded. Shes young enough that her body still has the capacity to operate simple motor functions. She can breathe, blink, move eyes, drool, what have you. As far as the person upstairs goes, she checked out a LONG time ago. If the parents have their way, she'll be relegated to a hospital bed for as long as modern science can keep her alive. Should she have to be like this for another 15 years? 20? 30? more? Should the husband half to endure such a thing for that long? When is enough enough? Nobody should have to live like that. Not even for a couple years.

It's completely selfish to keep her alive.

Also a friend of mine gave me the go-ahead to pull the plug should he end up the same way.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/032405I.html

Just to rehash from someone with more authority than some random person I quoted before.

While we at American Council on Science and Health have been determined to remain on the sidelines of the raging national debate about the fate of Terri Schiavo (this is largely a legal and ethical issue, not a scientific one), we cannot remain silent about the outrageous misrepresentation of scientific facts about this case that has been occurring in the past ten days.

The medical reality of Ms. Schiavo's case is this: She has been in what is medically referred to as a "permanent vegetative state" for the past 15 years, ever since her heart temporarily stopped (probably due to the severe effects of an eating disorder), depriving her brain of oxygen. Brain scans indicate that her cerebral cortex ceased functioning -- probably just after she experienced cardiac arrest in 1990. Ms. Schiavo's CAT scan shows massive shrinking of the brain, and her EEG is flat. Physicians confirm that there is no electrical activity coming from her brain. While the family video repeatedly shown on television suggests otherwise, her non-functioning cortex precludes cognition, including any ability to interact or communicate with people or show any signs of awareness. Dozens of experts over the years who have examined Ms. Schiavo agree that there is no hope of her recovering -- even though her body, face and eyes (if she is given food and hydration) might continue to move for decades to come.

Those are the harsh facts.

World Net Daily has covered this story longer than any news outlet anywhere. They have an excellent summary called The whole Terri Schiavo story.


Read it and weep.

Top Wop wrote:She is NOT in a vegitative state! She is disabled.

Seven years of court battles, and many Court appointed Doctors disagree with you.

Personally if the parents can't accept that she is brain-dead and no longer a functioning human being after 15 years the courts SHOULD step in and make a ruling.

They obviously have lost their grip on reality and measures should be taken so that they can't drag this out any longer.

"She is NOT in a vegitative state! She is disabled"

diabled people can respond to stimuli.


Like i said before.. Shiny object.

as someone who is completely unbiased and quite honestly doesn't give a ★■◆● about the whole thing - it looks to me that the "experts" on the husbands side are arguing with scinetifically/medically backed statements and the "experts" on the parents side are only trying to attack the husbands character and play to peoples emotions as their defense.

however, i cant say that i blame them. if it were my daughter i would do everything i could to try and save her and never agree to allow the plug to be pulled. what if in 15 years we had the technology to cure her? to me as a parent, its worth waiting to find out. i think the only way i would agree to pull the plug is if it can be proven to me that she is indeed suffering. right now it doesn't seem like anyone knows.

on the other hand, i can relate to the husband as well. its been 15 years. it doesnt look like she's ever coming back. again, 15 years. after that long a time he found someone else and moved on - who wouldnt want to or want their spouse to, especially after so long? if i were him i'd probably come to the same decision. i wouldnt want her to suffer any more. i wouldnt want to suffer anymore. i wouldnt want to make my new family suffer anymore.

after looking at it from both sides, i'd have to pull the plug. the brain is something we dont understand. the odds of us understanding it enough to save her before she dies of old age are slim to none. we also dont know whether or not she's still in there, still in there but gone insane because all she has done for 15 years is lay there paraylzed and drooling, or maybe she just isnt there anymore. we dont know enough yet about the brain to really be 100% sure either way.

nobody has ever been brought back from being brain dead, so we cant ask someone if while they were a veg it was like a long nap or an excrutiatingly long torture session. i would have to make the decision based on the chance she may indeed be in her own personal hell. thats no way to let someone you love carry on for the next 30 years, in my opinion.

I think it's pretty safe to say that 15 years from now the spinal fluid that consists of one half of her brain will not be able to be reconstituted into a solid fully functional brain.