It Has Begun

[Black Tulip]

...
My read on Europe is that it is more secular, both in law and in actuality, than the States or Canada. It has, I believe, something to do with the 30 Years War and that interesting little thing known as the Inquisition.
...

LOL As a matter of fact, for the Netherlands it was the 80 Years War. That's how long it took us to get rid of the Spanish and their Inquisition.

Have you ever read my Sticks & Stones story? It's in part about that interesting little thing.

 

[rgraham666]

LOL As a matter of fact, for the Netherlands it was the 80 Years War. That's how long it took us to get rid of the Spanish and their Inquisition.

Have you ever read my Sticks & Stones story? It's in part about that interesting little thing.

Ooop. And here I claim to be an historian. Forgot about that.

And no I haven't but I shall.

 

[Samandiriel]

I had an odd thought this morning...this poor woman led a normal life never realizing that one day she would become the crux of a controversy that would cause a stir not just in her town, but in courtrooms, living rooms, bars and pubs, dividing the camps into the "Yes" and "No" people. She's now a martyr to a cause, all from a hospital bed in a Florida town.

Makes you wonder about your own destiny a little.

 

[impressive]

Rest in peace, Terri.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Rest in peace, Terri.

Amen.

 

[rgraham666]

Adding my prayers for her safe rest as well.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The best thing you can say about the entire affair is that it's over.

Thank God for endings.

Rest In Peace.

 

[shereads]

The best thing you can say about the entire affair is that it's over.

I wouldn't put money on it. What do evangelical Christians call a fatwa?

 

[shereads]

Be careful what you wish for.

Pope's Feeding Tube Brings End-of-Life Questions Closer

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 31, 2005; Page A01


ROME, March 30 -- A decision by Pope John Paul II's doctors to feed him through a nasal tube takes the treatment of the chronically ill pontiff closer to the ethically and religiously wrenching decisions of what medical measures should be taken to prolong life and for how long.

Doctors have threaded a tube through the pope's nose to his stomach to "better the supply of calories and favor a sound recovery of strength," the Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said Wednesday in a statement. The pope continues a "slow and progressive convalescence," he said.

<snip>

The use of a feeding tube, initiated at the time of the Terri Schiavo life-support controversy in the United States, suggested that the church's teaching on medical treatment might come to be tested on its highest leader.

Long-standing Catholic doctrine links continuation of extreme measures of life-support to the possibility of recovery. Under that approach, it can sometimes be morally permissible to cut off such measures if there is no hope of improved health and a patient's family would be excessively burdened.

The pope has never publicly discussed details of his own care, but he has made numerous statements regarding measures that ought to be taken to preserve life in the most desperate situations. He does not view the provision of food, regardless of how it is done, as an extreme measure.

A year ago, the pope criticized the withdrawal of food from patients in a vegetative state. "The administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, even to patients in a vegetative state with no hope of recovery," he said during a conference of physicians and ethicists.

The pope will be fed the equivalent of baby food, semi-liquid meat, milk and vegetables, through the tube, doctors say. Surgical insertion of a tube through his abdomen into his stomach is an alternative for the longer term, but that surgery would require hospitalization. "The Holy Father cannot eat or drink on his own. If they didn't do something, he'd die," Corrado Manni, a former Vatican physician, said in an interview.



------


Maybe I'm a coward, but I don't think I'd want to live past the point where semi-liquid meat has to be forced into my stomach to keep me alive. Even if I'm fully awake and aware...Make that especially if I'm awake and aware. I vote for hydration via IV liquids, a gift basket of morphine, and a private room with a decent sound system.

I have all the respect in the world for Stephen Hawking, Chistopher Reeve and others who find purpose in their lives when their bodies fail. Unfortunately, wealth plays a significant role in keeping someone clean, mobile, relatively comfortable - and in Hawking's case, providing the technology that allows him to communicate. Most of us won't have the luxury of private care. The Pope, God bless him, will have the best, I''m sure.

I've seen enough nursing homes to have an idea of what life is like for more typical cases. In Florida, there's enough abuse and neglect at understaffed, underfunded nursing homes that there are law firms who specialize in the field. Dying slowly from infected bed sores would make that liquified meat less enjoyable by half.

 

[Pure]

Terri Schiavo R I P

 

[impressive]

I'll have to tell him -- my son, that is -- when he gets home from school. As I feed him through his tube, I'll have to tell him that the general consensus is that his life is not worth living. He'll laugh, of course, because he knows otherwise (but that's "just" a reflex).

And then there are my other children. Young now, but very bright. I'll have to tell them, too. They'll be frightened and appalled. Then, I'll have to tell them that someday that kind of power will be in their hands -- that someday, they can decide their brother is just too damned inconvenient, and then they can stop feeding him.

Will I see fear in his eyes -- or theirs?

 

[shereads]

I'll have to tell him -- my son, that is -- when he gets home from school. As I feed him through his tube, I'll have to tell him that the general consensus is that his life is not worth living. He'll laugh, of course, because he knows otherwise (but that's "just" a reflex).

If your son is coming home from school and knows it, comparing him to Terri Shiavo is meaningless.

Even the neurologists on Fox News who had seen her flat CT scans arrived at the same conclusion as the dozens who studied her case before it became a cultural and religious battleground: the part of her brain that died fifteen years ago was the only part capable of knowing, feeling, loving, fearing, remembering, or distinguishing between pain and pleasure.

No one has suggested that people who retain even a fraction of that awareness should be denied life support.

Terri Shiavo's case doesn't apply to every person with severe brain damage. It applies when there is a very specific type of damage. A hamster's brain scan is more like Terri Shiavo's before the cerebellum died, than the flat scans taken afterward. There was no hope of getting better, because the brain doesn't regenerate like other organs. Extensive therapy might have trained her body to behave in certain ways, the way Pavlov trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. She'd have been a puppet shaped like Terri Shiavo. She wouldn't have cared. Thank God for that. If she had been able to feel humiliated, these last weeks would have been torture.

Neurologists who studied this case before it became a social and religious battleground have repeatedly explained that the parts of her brain that still functioned - and were the reason she wasn't considered 'brain dead' - were the parts that enable the rote functions of the body. Waking and sleeping. Moving and making sounds in response to stimuli. A range of randomly changing facial expressions like the smile that made that videotape so tragically misleading. Terri's face frowned and smiled because the facial muscles worked and there was nothing to stop them.

Someone desperate not to let go could easily believe that the smiles and frowns and cries had meaning. Provided they ignored the irrevocable facts. Short of a miracle comparable to Christ rising from the grave, there was no way for Terri's body to be happy to see Terri's mother.

Nobody was home. If it happens to someone you care about, you can choose what to do as long as you don't live in Texas. If you can afford a private hospital, you can do it there too.

Would it frighten your kids to hear the explanation you described? Hell yes. It would frighten me if I didn't know better. It could not have frightened Terri Shiavo. As long as your kids are capable of knowing fear, this controversy does not apply. I would fight at your side for the right to keep your son alive while there is a chance that he might want to live.

Until your children are old enough to understand, why explain something that thousands of irate adults refuse to believe?

You implied that it's inconvenient to keep someone in Terri's condition alive. Yes, I'm sure it is. But it's unfair to imply that it's the only reason not to. I ranted about Michael Shiavo last week because I wondered why, after winning the right to remove the feeding tube and providing assurances that she couldn't suffer from it, his side couldn't concede to her parents, whose suffering was undeniable.

I couldn't think of a reason for his stubbornness other than spite - or inconvience - until I thought about the way we treat the bodies of our dead. We bury them in coffins lined with satin cushions, as if it mattered to them. Some people choose mausoleum interment or cremation because they feel uncomfortable with the image of the person they loved being trapped and alone beneath the dirt. We're appalled when we see dead bodies mutilated by a mob. Why, when we know there's no longer any awareness of shame or suffering, do we concern ourselves with the dignity of someone's body? Why is necrophilia a crime? We care because the last thing we can do for anyone is to honor their memory.

As horrified as Terri Shiavo's parents were at the thought of letting her die, maybe Michael Shiavo felt just as strongly that his wife's memory was dishonored by the preservation of her body in a state without privacy or dignity. Her parents were trying to honor her in a way that comforted them but made him cringe. No wonder he didn't visit her more often. I assumed he was bored or uncaring, when it's just as likely that he couldn't stand the sight of his wife's living effigy.

It's not how everyone would feel, but it's how I would have felt. I hate open-casket funeral ceremonies where someone I loved is made to look like a wax doll. I prefer cremation because I'm disturbed by images of my body trapped and decaying. For my family's sake, I know I should let them choose burial instead of cremation. I won't be the one who cares when the time comes. But it gives me the creeps. It's not logical, but neither is anything about these rituals. The argument about Terri Shiavo wouldn't have happened if everyone accepted the same definition of what makes us human. Until that happens, individual choice is the only fair solution.

 

[impressive]

If your son is coming home from school and knows it, comparing him to Terri Shiavo is meaningless.

I have reams of medical reports that are no more encouraging than Terri's. The comparison is most definitely there and most definitely valid. I could have his tube pulled -- no questions asked. Mercy killing -- just because I just don't want to deal with him any more. He's disposable, after all -- at least according to the majority.

 

[shereads]

I have reams of medical reports that are no more encouraging than Terri's. The comparison is most definitely there and most definitely valid. I could have his tube pulled -- no questions asked. Mercy killing -- just because I just don't want to deal with him any more. He's disposable, after all -- at least according to the majority.

I'm on the side that defends your right to do what you believe is best.

Mercy killing only applies when someone - not the caregiver - is suffering, and is only legal in Oregon. Edited to add: Isn't it ironic that we deny the choice to people who are still capable of making it?

 

[impressive]

I'm on the side that defends your right to do what you believe is best.

And I'm on the side that defends my son's right to every opportunity known to medical science to make his own wishes known.

 

[shereads]

And I'm on the side that defends my son's right to every opportunity known to medical science to make his own wishes known.

Every opportunity known to medical science was exhausted for Terry Shiavo the moment her cerebellum died from lack of oxygen. Wishes take place in the cerebellum.

I'm terribly sorry that her case is so personal to you and your family, and I have no desire to make your pain any worse than it is. But it's wrong to make a blanket condemnation of people who trusted science here, and fought against changing the law to deny Terry Shiavo's husband the right to trust it. As long as there is hope that your son has a wish he would like to express, there is hope that he can someday do so. If he can wish, his case is nothing like hers.

I wish for you and your son to get your wish.

 

[Kassiana]

This case has shown me that living wills are meaningless unless you're rich. If you're not rich, you'll be taken off life support once your funds are exhausted anyway and die, regardless of your brain function. So essentially I have no chance of continuing to live if my heart or lungs choose to shut down.

It's wonderful being poor.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Cryogenically frozen

Not to be flip or anything, but what's the legal status of people who are cryogenically frozen? The Alcor foundation has 67 frozen bodies (or sometimes just heads) of legally dead people frozen in liquid nitrogen in a vault in Scottsdale Arizona.

http://www.alcor.org/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0318_050318_cryonics.html

We know how to freeze them (we think), but we don't yet know how to resuscitate them. They all signed legal papers before they died expressing their desire to be resuscitated when and if a way to do it can be found. It may take years, it may never happen at all. What's their legal status?

Does this mean that we have an obligation to maintain them in their frozen state? If their legal guardians say to pull the plug, do we letthem do it? Are they legally dead, or brain dead, or in some other legal/spiritual limbo?

 

[shereads]

Not to be flip or anything, but what's the legal status of people who are cryogenically frozen? The Alcor foundation has 67 frozen bodies (or sometimes just heads) of legally dead people frozen in liquid nitrogen in a vault in Scottsdale Arizona.

http://www.alcor.org/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0318_050318_cryonics.html

We know how to freeze them (we think), but we don't yet know how to resuscitate them. They all signed legal papers before they died expressing their desire to be resuscitated when and if a way to do it can be found. It may take years, it may never happen at all. What's their legal status?

Does this mean that we have an obligation to maintain them in their frozen state? If their legal guardians say to pull the plug, do we letthem do it? Are they legally dead, or brain dead, or in some other legal/spiritual limbo?

They're dead, and will be seriously dead if the company paid to store them doesn't pay the electric bill.

I'm pretty sure you'd need a coroner's death certificate before FreezCo would be allowed to load you up in the van and take you to their plant in Scarsdale.

Who wants to wake up fifty years from now anyway? Dick Cheney's clone will be the Grand Duke of AmeriMexiCanada.

 

[shereads]

This case has shown me that living wills are meaningless unless you're rich. If you're not rich, you'll be taken off life support once your funds are exhausted anyway and die, regardless of your brain function. So essentially I have no chance of continuing to live if my heart or lungs choose to shut down.

It's wonderful being poor.

That's true in Texas and maybe some other states. But it can't be true everywhere or they wouldn't have passed a law allowing hospitals to end life support against the family's wishes. Public hospitals are not officially allowed to deny care to indigent patients. They don't have to do anything extra for you, but they can't let you die just because you have no money.

You're right, though. Our healthcare system, like our legal system, is among the best in the world if you have a bottomless bank account. Few things are more miserable than to be sick and have to share a "semi-private" hospital room with a stranger who's vomiting into a bowl three feet from your bed.