In the past few years, I have re-evaluated my personal definition of love. I believe that love and desire are very different things, and that people often get the two confused. True love, real love, is selflessness, is concern about your loved one's happiness, and most importantly is, when need be, putting your loved one first, no matter how difficult that can be. Desire is about your own happiness. It is often selfish, and your personal feelings come before that of your 'loved one'.

I became seriously ill four years ago. I am still recovering and am often house-bound. When I became ill, the person I loved, and thought loved me, couldn't handle the situation and abandoned me. We are no longer in contact.

This is what led to my re-evaluation, and I truly believe that when your loved one's world falls apart, whether through illness or otherwise, that if you truly love them you will put them first even if it causes you pain.

I'm not saying it is easy, love never is. But it is different than desire, which is what I believe leads to crimes of passion, and domestic violence, which the perpetrator always seems to commit in the name of 'love'.

So, according to the Schindlers, their wishes as parents supercede the wishes of Terri, whatever they might be? Do they overrule the wishes of their other adult children in this way?

Chuck, while I agree that that's one of the implications, I think what they would say is that one voice for "keep a body alive" trumps all other ideas. Because the primary thing here is "life," no matter what. So it wouldn't matter if you were talking about your adult children, your parents, your spouse, or your garage mechanic.

I am sorry, Elese. Something like that, on a minor scale, happened to me and it is horribly painful in the re-evalution that it forces you to do among other things.

I am not innocent of selfish love. But I do think that parents owe selfless love to their children, if nothing else.

I had a friend who went too long without oxygen. After a while, when it became evident that nothing was working north of her brainstem, they pulled the plug.

It was hard. It was a bad, bad day. Some of her friends were insisting right down to the end that she might recover. They wanted her to not be dead.

Well, so did I. But there was no use to it. All I could do was forgive her for stumbling into a bad combination of circumstances, and let her go.

I'd have done the same thing if I were the person holding power of attorney. Insisting against all evidence that she could be brought back would have been a power trip: all about me, not her. She was gone.

To those who wonder what definition of "love" the Schindlers were using, I submit this.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

(*waves* long time reader, first time commenter, blah blah blah :)

Lee and I talked about it--we had a long time to do so, considering we just crossed the country by car--and each of us reiterated that while we'd like a good go of possible treatments, as soon as it became evident that we wouldn't come back from whereever we were, that we should be let go.

("Rule Number Three: I can't bring people back from the dead. It's not a pretty picture, and I don't like doing it. ")

I am slightly worried that if I were to get in such a state before getting married that my extremely Mormon family would insist on the same rigamarole that Schiavo's family went through. I wouldn't be interested in being a poster child for the Religious Right's so-called "Culture of Life".

Here in SF, I read that a lot of folks are worried about this superceding of the patient's wishes, particularly because gay partners often are overlooked in favour of parents, in terms of guardianship.

What I don't get is the way they used the Church to defend their "right" to keep her body alive. If one truly believes what the Church teaches us, that we all return to the loving presence of God, then why would one seek to artificially deny a loved one that release? Watching the papal death watch today seems like a pretty stunning reminder of what the Church's actual position on death is, that it's nothing to be hastened, but that it's also something perfectly natural, and not to be feared.

When my mother was dying, there were a few days when the doctor sincerely thought she could be bought a few month's comfortable remission. She had always said she didn't want heroic measures. But at that time of crisis, she wasn't entirely sure. So I didn't think I was violating her wishes giving her a little respirator. After a couple of days we could tell that remission wasn't going to happen, so --since it was a Catholic Hospital, we had to use the term "weaning her from the respirator." The doctors were entirely wondeful about the whole thing -- the figuring out period, the decision, the process.
I mean, my brother and I killed my mother much more surely than anybody killed Theresa Schiavo -- my mother was conscious and participated in the discussion in a way. But it was right.

Now. You know Mother Teresa? The one they're going to make a saint out of?

She never prolonged anybody's life, including people who had curable conditions. The whole point of her "hospitals" was to provide spiritual comfort to the dying, which in my mind is not a problem except for two things: many of her dying had conditions from which they could recover given any medical support at all, and the way her operation was presented in the media was that they were conventional hospitals.

But the point here -- if everybody thinks Mother Teresa was so great for just comforting people as they died and not trying to prolong their lives, why do they think Michael Schiavo is such a goon for caring for his wife's vegetative body for so long and then asking to turn it off?

It can't just be parental wishes: I bet a lot of Indian parents would have been quite happy to have their children come back to them healthy, from a real hospital.

It's not that religiousness has to mean this kind of crazy behavior: the wonderful cancer doctor who navigated the issues of my mother's dying so delicately had a fish thing on his desk.

That Mother Teresa question is very good. It made me realise that I don't see how any Catholic can simultaneously maintain that MT was a saint and that Terri Schiavo should still be alive.

Ew, I didn't know that about Mother Teresa. Anyway, the whole vow of poverty thing strikes me as problematic as well.

Back to Schiavo. I remember one Sunday a couple weeks ago, the homily was about Lazarus. When Jesus came back to resurrect Lazarus, one of the women berated Jesus along the lines of "If you had not left, he wouldn't have died". Then it says Jesus wept. The priest asked the us to consider why Jesus wept when he was going to resurrect Lazarus anyway?
Possibilities:
- Wept for the pain caused the family
- Wept becaue Lazarus will die anyway after he is resurrected
- Wept for his own coming death
Who knows? Life is a temporary state.

Really, my take away from all this death these past weeks is that if I die tomorrow, it's enough that in this life I have loved and been loved. (Of course I would like to get to a healthy old age and be a doting grandma, but we never know).

Didn't I read that Mr. Schindler pulled the plug on his own mother? I DO doubt their sincerity. Especially after reading that they're selling their mailing list. Though I have to say I find the prospect of a whole lot of Schindlerites getting junk mail far from unpleasant!

I'm still working out the terms of my living will. Oddly, I've decided I WOULD want to be kept alive if I were conscious but unable to communicate. (Unable to perceive, no. No opportunity for learning.) And I'm going to leave decisions in ambiguous cases to my friend and Priestess Susan. She'll know what to do, and have the judgement (and Atropine dispatch) to call halt when the time comes.

I found this blog really interesting, and it lets you read some of the court judgements:

http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html

He's been following this case before it came to international, or even national, attention.

Back to lurking:-)

(smacks forehead)
The above link is also on The Daily Kos.

I really should have read the links before posting. Sorry.

Among the several hundred people that were interviewed here in the desperate need to fill hours and days of Papal vigil (almost all the channels are running non-stop special editions and have been since yesterday afternoon) was the, hum, er, the head friar of the Franciscans in Assisi.

The anchor presented him and he chimed in with a jolly and cheerful: "Hello!" He managed to curb his jollity and go on in a more neutral mode, but I was reminded that part of St. Francis's Canticle says, "Blessed be our sister, bodily death...". My friend Anna told me later that they have feasts in the convents when a nun dies, because she's going to Paradise.

Despite all this the Franciscans are not ghoulish, as a rule they are, well, cheerful souls. It would also seem a more natural attitude for people who belive in an afterlife than this gloomy celebration of pain and suffering we're seeing.

T - Yup, everything you're said, you're 1,000% correct on this one.

Xopher - you might be thinking of the ever-popular Tom DeLay, whose father became badly brain-damaged in an accident (he seemed to recognize Tom's younger brother's voice but not much else) and they pulled the plug on him in 1988 without any governmental intervention.

One good thing about this situation is I think many families who wouldn't talk about these things have talked about them. My parents are both reasonably healthy and in their mid-70s. I was up visiting them last week, and both made a point of saying that they had living wills and they didn't want to be subjected to all the crap that Terri was. We'd never discussed this sort of thing at all before.

I've had a donor card/living will since 1978, since the Karen Ann Quinlain days. I never want to be anthrophomorphized after severe brain damage the way that Terri was. It was simply appalling.

Laurie Mann posted:

One good thing about this situation is I think many families who wouldn't talk about these things have talked about them.

Oh yes. I've realized, to my utter horror, that my parents might well do precisely what the Schindlers did. Since I'm single, I don't think anyone could stop them without some fairly specific steps on my part to enforce my wishes.

After investigating my options, I just signed a medical power of attorney, giving the decision-making power to a dear friends of mine. She's a critical-care nurse, and an extremely practical person. She informs me that these things stand up in court VERY well.

I'm sorry if this is pedantic, but in your first paragraph following the quotation, I think you meant to say "...could alter the Schindler family members’ resolve..." and "...the Schindlers got to go on thinking...".

Thanks for sharing this report, though, for I hadn't seen it, and I agree with your conclusions here.

Watching the papal death watch today seems like a pretty stunning reminder of what the Church's actual position on death is, that it's nothing to be hastened, but that it's also something perfectly natural, and not to be feared.

Precisely. Which is why this article left me puzzled. If the Pope really did express a wish for life support to be maintained as long as possible, wouldn't that be defying the will of God?

There's preserving life, and then there's denying death. The line may be thin, but it does exist. The Catholics (the tradition in which I was raised) believe in the kingdom of Heaven -- why, then, would the Pope want to be kept away from there any longer than necessary?

Someone on another board made a comment to the effect that "Most disabled people want her to live, and most able-bodied people would let her die."

As a disabled person who would NOT want to go through that, I was indignant and horrified. Anyone else have 2 cents on this?

I'm so sorry for what she and her loved ones went through, but grateful that it's gotten people talking about what they'd want.

Melissa, I'm disabled and I was horrified by that over-simplification. I also believe I wouldn't want to have my life prolonged if I were unfortunate enough to be in a similar condition as Terry Schiavo was in.

I've just been reading the testimony given by Father Gerard Murphy, and he spoke about unhealthy grief, in relation to some of the extreme things the Schindler family said.

Teresa, your post refers to "the Schiavos" and "the Schiavo family" when I believe you mean "the Schindlers"...

As for the disability thing...I haven't asked my disabled sister about it, but I can guess her reaction. It would involve a lot of cussing. The argument I've seen disability advocates make is that Terri Schivo's life is being devalued because she's severely disabled. But it seems to me that what's being devalued is her self-determination. She stated a desire not to live like this, but because she's "severely disabled," there's no need to honor that?

wacky.

Teresa,

Apparently, a later page in the Wolfson report has a footnote stating that the Schindlers later retracted that stuff you mention. It's not clear to me how the retraction relates, time-wise, to the original statement, or what the context was.

I'm inclined to take the amputation stuff as valid, considering the Schindlers have shown themselves to be amenable to changing their story for best effect. (For example, going from 'she's drying up, her nose is bleeding' to 'she has rosy cheeks, she's fine' the other day, when they realized their negativity might lead the courts to dismiss their last filings because it was too late to help Terri.)

The Schindlers kinda remind me of cat-hoarders.

"She stated a desire not to live like this, but because she's "severely disabled," there's no need to honor that?"

Yes! Exactly!

And entrusting a person's life to politicians who don't even know her...:shudder:

"Honoring life" also means respecting the fact that it's finite.

I was really mad that Jesse Jackson showed up, siding with Terri's parents. Why on Earth?

I totally disagree with the characterization of Terri as "severely disabled". She was *gone*.

Today a papal spokesman compared Terri's situation to the Pope's. Again, they're totally different. The Pope is still present in his body, and is in position to indicate what care he wants. Terri was not.

My grandmother died after her feeding tube was removed at her children's request. She was 99 years old, unconscious, and not going to get better. They had revived her before, but realized that it was for their own benefit and not hers. She was ready to go. This time they were able to let her go.

My cousin Katie was with her when she died, and said she had a beatific look on her face, and actually rose in the bed and extended her arms as though she was going to meet someone. Katie imagined her going to meet our grandfather. (I can't vouch for this story, of course. I wasn't there.)

Regarding the pope's impending death, I was interested to learn of the traditional method to confirm that he's really dead: they ritually call out his name and hit him on the head with a silver hammer three times. (Presumably if he's not dead, he'd cry out "ow!".)

Is that where the Beatles got the idea for Maxwell's Silver Hammer?

I'm stunned by the whole Schiavo furore, since I really can't imagine the State even thinking about pretending to believe that I'm not my wife's next of kin.

I don't mean that the State couldn't possibly do it, I mean that I can't imagine my reaction.

I salute her husband, since she has (by all accounts) been dead for fifteen years, and he could just have walked away and left her to the various vultures.

Bravo, sir.

I totally disagree with the characterization of Terri as "severely disabled". She was *gone*.

I agree with you. Those who advocated keeping her alive were calling her "severely disabled" and comparing her condition to, for instance, cerebral palsy. My point is that whether you call her condition a disability or a living death, her wishes should still be paramount. It seems strange to me that advocates for the disabled would champion the idea of government being appointed to decide the fates of those who can't speak for themselves - as opposed to their own carefully selected guardians and kin. But there it is.

The Karen Quinlan case is an interesting contrast - her parents fought for her right to die, and founded a hospice in her name.

Oh for crying out loud.
I have cerebral palsy. People do, on occasion, underestimate my intelligence. It's NOT the same thing as having virtually no cortex.

The poor woman got used like a rope in a tug-of-war.

================
DIE OR NEVER DIE
================

"I would never die for my beliefs,
because I might be wrong"
-- Betrand Russell (1872-1970)

================

I would never die for my beliefs,
I might be wrong.
Fatal terrors turn into reliefs,
right all along.

I would never die for my beliefs,
the battle song
shows life is short, in its motifs,
but art is long.

================
Jonathan Vos Post
1730-1737
13 March 2005

Melissa Mead: The poor woman got used like a rope in a tug-of-war.

The image I kept getting was of the crowd in Somalia using the airman's body as a puppet.

Cattle die; kinsemen die.
You yourself shall surely die.
Only word-fame dies not,
For one who well achieves it.

Dying for belief is one thing;
Surely this is knowledge.

Jon H wrote:
"Apparently, a later page in the Wolfson report has a footnote stating that the Schindlers later retracted that stuff you mention."

Gee, what might that have been like?

"Hey, all that stuff about how we'd rather let our daughter rot than let her die? That was a joke! We were making a funny! Ha, ha! We Schindlers, we're a barrel of laughs. Just like that movie a few years ago. Laughed ourselves silly at that one."

Anything that Randall Terry is for, I'm against. It's a useful rule of thumb.

Has anyone ever read _City of God_?
"Gomers never die." A gomer is someone, like Teri, who lives but has no brain.

I find it odd that disabled people feel they have something in common with a body sustained on life support. There's a huge, gaping distance between a disability and NOT HAVING A BRAIN.

OK, enough yelling.

Clearly, the Right to Life people wanted to use this case to get a precedent set by the Supreme Court, which was not buying it. I think it was the case of the parents wanting revenge, and the Right using that to try to advance their own agenda, trampling all over anybody in the vicinity in the process (as usual).

given the limb-cutting off thing perhaps the schindlers could receive a roomfull of persistent vegetative people and use them to build a range of home furniture, a la clockwork orange. The one thing that would normally work against such a plan is all those ungainly limbs but if they're okay with cutting them off when neccessary? Anyway I think this would be the kind of hobby/home-redecorating project that could help them take their minds off their grief.

It would be pleasantly ironic if the Right-To-Life people push the issue, and end up getting euthanasia legalized.

A lot of people have been complaining about the dehydration/starvation, and the discomfort caused thereby. Of course, if Terri Schiavo had a witnessed, notarized living will approving removal of a feeding tube, she'd still have died in the same manner.

I think they may harp on the inhumanity of starving people to death in an effort to remove the advanced directive option of having feeding tubes removed.

I don't think that'll go over very well. I think way too many people, across the political spectrum, feel that termination is a necessary, ethical, and moral option even when the body can breathe on its own.

So, if the right-to-lifers set up a debate in which the nation agrees that removal of feeding tubes leads to a nasty end, but the nation believes a means of terminating life is necessary, it naturally leads to the conclusion that a more humane method is required, and that would only be provided by euthanasia.

Then the right-to-lifers will get to explain that people should be forced to die by starvation and/or dehydration, rather than something more humane.

Doh!

I find it odd that disabled people feel they have something in common with a body sustained on life support.

Were large numbers of them doing so? This argument seemed to be used most by people who were sound in body.

Though -- and here I'm no doubt going to be misunderstood -- while it may be odd, it is not an incomprehensible or meaningless notion. There have been regimes -- we all know them -- that have legalized doing away with damaged but functional human beings, though the argument has generally been that it's to "protect" the Gesundvolk. (When the dignity of the damaged comes up, no one ever asks them -- it's always "Would YOU want to live like this?" with the answer presumed.) One does not have to be very badly damaged at all to hear (or overhear) comments as to what a waste of resources and burden on one's alleged fellows one is. Sometimes this causes one to glance over one's shoulder.

But "the culture of life" is just another codeword for an issue that has nothing to do with disability or brain death; it is absolutely separate from capital punishment -- and, as we have been reminded, the former Governor of Texas had no problems whatever signing a bill that made it easier for hospitals to cease support to vegetative indigent patients, for the protection of the weal -- er, healthy citizens.

A local radio station carried a report from CNN Radio that Congress was considering a ban on drinking while using the Internet. (They admitted at the end of the piece that it was an April Fool's joke.) I couldn't find a link to it from CNN's website, though.

Aaugh! Somehow that got into the wrong thread. I'm not sure how. Sorry. (And no, I'm not drinking while using the Internet. Not now, at any rate. Sleepy, yes, high, no.)

Jon H - I've been thinking about that too. I don't understand why they can't give someone in Terri's position a more humane release. If the decision has been made, why starve her to death so slowly?

I find the name right-to-life ironic. If you have the right to life, surely you should have the right to decide what to do with that life.

And I want to chime in: Having no cerebral cortex is NOT the same as being disabled. And being disabled does NOT mean that you are unable to decide for yourself and must rely on 'healthy' people to do your thinking for you. Aargh. I have had time to calm down and will not start cussing.

Re the Pope: yes, he gets called by his baptismal name three times. Trying to find where I read that....well, here's a reasonable site. And they can cover his face instead of whacking at him with a silver hammer.

Thanks, John M. Ford, for your compassionate and thoughtful post. Some of the comments on this thread are too callous for words.

Have been a devoted follower of this blog for two years. ~waves~ Relurking, probably for good.

One of the things that fascinates me about this whole case, is the sense that what motivates the pro-lifers outside the hospice resembles in a fashion what motivates the bible-types who want to promote creationism ("intelligent design") in public school science classes. A form of presumption,

Thus: if we just keep her alive, then eventually a miracle will happen, she'll get better. Because we want God to do it.

If we construct a theory of creation in which God must take an active part—at such and such a period in the X era, God zapped an ape and turned him into a man—then the theory will be accepted.

It's a form of presumption on God. And, if I recall my theology correctly, that presumption is a sin. (You shall not tempt the Lord thy God.)

Isn't it? Or am I drawing with too broad a brush here?

Too broad, yes, I think so.

It's -- so far as I can tell -- a whole lot simpler.

God does not allow bad things to good people. This is a good person. Therefor, the bad thing didn't happen and stuff that looks like a bad thing can only be the result of malign influences.

This is the theology they're using. I think there's a whole lot wrong with it, most especially in the degree to which is results in picking axiom over experience, but it is internally self consistent and tremendously flexible, since almost anything can be designated a malign influence.

John Farrell--no you are quite right that the Intelligent Design folks are a part of what happened with the Schiavo case. The Discovery Institute is based in Seattle to my utter embarassment. This post from digby at hullabaloo connects all the dots:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_27_digbysblog_archive.html#111202763462966966

So, and perhaps I'm making inferences that were unintended...

My mentally retarded sister, who is over 40 physically but functions around the level of a 5 year old, who cannot make any truly important decision for herself, cannot care for herself without the reminders that the average kindergartner needs, who cannot work to earn enough to feed herself, much less provide clothing or shelter, whom you perceive contributes nothing to the culture or society and in fact is a drain because she collects social security and uses medical resources perhaps beyond the average use of any other 40 year old woman...

So, because her cognitive skills have peaked, and the extent of her brain function is that George Washington is president and she wants to know what's for dinner tonight...

You don't think she's worth keeping around? She's not getting better. She's only going to get worse - the co-incidence of Downs Syndrome and dementia is extremely high and she has heart trouble.

Shall you kill her now?

That's EXACTLY how I see the Shiavo case.

When you all have some time and knowledge of living with a mentally incapacitated person, then we'll talk. Until then, you have no idea what you're talking about, what the Schindlers have lived through for fifteen years and what I've lived my entire life with. Until then, you have no clue.

And being disabled does NOT mean that you are unable to decide for yourself and must rely on 'healthy' people to do your thinking for you

Well, some disabilities do mean that. Many brain injuries and developmental disabilities require that others do your communicating for you, if not your actual thinking. This is why we have legal guardians - to speak for us when needed. But guardianship can be challenged in court based on just about anything, whereas a living will can't be.

Functioning at the level of a 5-year-old is different from having no consciousness. I've lived and worked with people with severe cognitive disabilities and would not for an instant advocate killing any of them.

What's disturbing about the Shiavo case is that we have someone maintaining that this is what she would have wanted, and the government stating that her wishes don't natter.

It's a tragedy all around.

Kizmet, the difference is that Terri Schiavo had a flatlined EEG and no cerbral cortex. There was no one home, and there wasn't even the physical structure to support it.

Your sister, on the other hand, is impaired, but obviously there. It seems you're reading comments on this thread as if they imply your sister would be a similar case to Schiavo, which confuses me. I'm not seeing it.

Mary - I agree with you. I think my comment was not written clearly enough. I am disabled, and I was responding to the discussion about people who take disabled to mean that a more able-bodied person is better qualified to make judgements about there life.

I have encountered many people like this myself and find it very frustrating. The discussion further up had been talking about this kind of presumption that does exist.

Many people are more severely disabled than me, although I do require a full-time carer (many thanks to my Mum). And Kizmet, I do not think your sister is a similar case to Schiavo. Your sister is not brain-dead. I am in the same position as your sister, although her problems are much more severe than mine. I rely on social security. I cannot work or support myself. I rely on my Mum and Dad to take care of me, even though I am thirty. I am impaired. So is your sister. But that is very different from having no brain activity. Being disabled doesn't stop any person from having value and worth.

Melissa Mead: please don't get the idea that I personally believe Terri Schiavo is "disabled" or that a brain injury resulting in a persistent vegetative state is in the same category as developmental disabilities or other brain injuries. I don't. But I'm not disabled, so I don't want to make bold statements about what counts as a disability and what doesn't.

I'm just baffled by the logic employed by the harvard guy with CP (linked in my post up yonder, who expresses the fear that by ending Terri Schiavo's life we're moving toward establishing a nazi-like regime in which the disabled will be exterminated. But it seems to me that the first step in creating such a regime is taking life-and-death decisions away from individuals and their carefully selected guardians, and handing it to the government.

Kizmet --

You seem to be missing the important distinction between 'killing someone' and 'not keeping them alive'.

Lots of street people starve to death or succumb to exposure; no one is, or could be, tried for murder or manslaughter over this.

Lots of people in hospitals are dying, and have decided that they don't want anybody contesting this point. Lots of people not in hospitals are doing the same thing. (The present pontiff comes to mind.)

Those people are certainly going to die; the fundamental point is that they're allowed to, for whatever reason. You can refuse medical treatment. (And a good thing, too.)

In a case like that of Terri Schiavo, the person isn't able to have wishes; in other cases, they may well have them but not be able to communicate them.

In which case there's a lot of mechanisms for figuring out what that persons wishes might be. In this particular case, pretty much the entire available mechanism got used. Three courts and something like nine different judges all agreed that Terri Schiavo, so far as was possible to tell, would not have wanted the medical treatment that was keeping her alive, given her condition and prospects.

I'm somewhat at a loss as to how that much effort and care to act in accordance to her wishes is equivalent to 'not wanting to keep her around'.

A door opens, and a door closes; we are all guests in the hall of life. It is not mete that we should, of our own fear or desire or need, refuse to another guest that they should depart.

Kizmet, one of my uncles, who died of heart failure some years ago, when he was around forty-five, had severe Downs Syndrome. I've done my time. I've earned my clue.

And I still don't see what Terry Schiavo, whose cerebral cortex was utterly destroyed, who had been in a persistent vegetative state for fifteen years and was not at all concious for any of that time has in common with a person with Down's Syndrome. My uncle was perfectly capable of stating his wishes, even when he was suffering from severe dementia. His wishes might have been impossible to fulfill, or totally irrational, but he stated them, often, and at high volume. There was no need to run tests to determine whether he might be concious at some level, because you could just follow him around for a while and watch him respond to stimuli (incidently, I am quite certain that a persistently vegetative patient is easier to keep tabs on than one suffering from dementia).

Terry Schiavo was not killed because she was a drain on society (although law in Texas does allow indigent patients to be removed from life support at the hospital's discretion, and I don't understand why that fact hasn't received more attention and outrage). Terry Schiavo was removed from life support because the courts in Florida, after extensive investigation, found the testimony stating that she would not have wished to be on such support to be credible, and found opposing testimony not to be so.

I just realised that what I said above could also be mis-interpreted:

"But that is very different from having no brain activity. Being disabled doesn't stop any person from having value and worth."

I apologise, I shouldn't have put those sentences side-by-side, it makes it sound like I'm saying Terry Schiavo had no worth. What I mean is, every person has worth and value, whether disabled or no.

But, as Graydon and RiceVermicelli have said much more eloquently than me, disabled is different than having no cerebral cortex, and if a person would not wish to be kept alive under such circumstances, no matter how difficult it is I think their wishes are important to honour.

Kismet, if you read the legal brief Teresa links to at the top, you'll see that the "improvement" they're specifically talking about in the Schiavo case is in her ability to swallow. If Terri Schiavo was able to swallow, there would be no artificial means necessary to keep her alive. The issue wasn't whether she should be kept alive through natural means (feeding, bathing, turning to prevent bedsores), but through artificial means (stomach tube, breathing aid, etc).

Although I know it can feel like this has implications for disabled folks like your sister, it's not the same thing at all, because the issue is specific to the use of artificial means, and the discussions about "improvement" are also specific to that.

Mary Dell, I agree with you completely. Giving life-and-death power over individuals to the government is exactly what I find disturbing.

Renatus: I already see developmentally disabled people being killed. There have been and are Downs infants who are starved to death _after birth_. Not permitted to be adopted, not permitted to be fed. Allowed to die of starvation. Newborns. Based on someone else's determination of what quality of life should be considered to be minimal.

So you may not see the connection. I see it.

Graydon: "You seem to be missing the important distinction between 'killing someone' and 'not keeping them alive'."

This case crossed that line. Terri wasn't "not kept alive," she was starved to death. She was killed in a horrific manner while people say "it's what she wanted." Who wants to be starved to death? Honestly. Answer the question. Who wants to _starve to death_? Who wants to _die of thirst_? Go read "Final Exit" and its description of this sort of death.

A door did indeed open. But to what? No longer is the standard of death brain death, now we have adjusted the standard to flatline EEG. And what's behind door number 2, Graydon? Do you really not see that there is a fundemental difference in how we've redefined death here?

RiceVermicelli: You have indeed walked the walk. Do you ever wonder when the decision is going to be made not to let people like your uncle and my sister have the choice? When the line will be redrawn again and they'll fail to pass the brainwave test?

(although law in Texas does allow indigent patients to be removed from life support at the hospital's discretion, and I don't understand why that fact hasn't received more attention and outrage)

I keep seeing this, but cannot find a cite of any actual law that references ability to pay. The law Bush signed is this one, the Health and Safety Code, Chapter 166*, and the relevant section is 166.046 through 166.052.

Regarding Sun Hudson, the short form from the news stories I've seen is that his condition was incurable, it got worse as his body grew (his lungs weren't growing), and he was considered to be suffering. IOW, the longer he was on support, the worse he hurt.

Nothing having to do with ability to pay, or making room for other patients, or suggestions that if his family was wealthy the hospital would have continued life support regardless of how much suffering it caused the patient.

--
* that's according to this guy, who says he helped write it.

Where would this be, Kizmet? Any links or sources or something I could look at?

No longer is the standard of death brain death, now we have adjusted the standard to flatline EEG.

I'm missing something. I thought a sustained flatline EEG was the indicator of brain death.

Kizmet - I guess you didn't read Time magazine this week.

Terri Schiavo had no clue whatsoever what happened to her for the last 15 years. It did not honor life to keep her breathing.

In the case of your sister (and my own fairly incapacitated sister, too) she knows what's going on around her. It's a completely different situation. Being disabled and being in a persistent vegetative state are two completely different things. Whenever members of the disabled community try to connect them, it's very unfortunate.

The same people who keep raving about "erring on the side of life" are sending our soldiers off to die around the world and killing tens of thousands of civilians who may not have been involved with any insurgency. They're allowing guns to proliferate throughout our society so that a teenaged boy shot a teeneaged girl merely because she didn't want to kiss him. The Republicans are trying to hoodwink people who see Terri Schiavo as a "symbol of life." They don't believe in "erring on the side of life," they merely believe in extending their control over personal issues.

Has anyone ever read _City of God_?
"Gomers never die." A gomer is someone, like Teri, who lives but has no brain.

Lydia, I always thought "gomer" was used by hospital staff to refer to barely ill patients who were taking up space in their emergency rooms ("Get Out of My Emergency Room") so I went exploring. That link suggests the book you are thinking of may be House of God rather than "City".

There was a doctor interviewed on the news last night who stated he was entering the hospital room soon after she was admitted and overheard the Schindler family asking the husband how much of his share of the money he planned to give them from the lawsuit over her condition (and yes, I do believe that is the world's longest run on sentence). He said he never agreed to give them any of his money from the lawsuit. Then the war began. Other points to consider:

The husband gets the remainder of the lawsuit money now that it is not going towards her care. I don't know how much that is. Maybe it's all gone.

Dying of thirst seems like a hell of a way to go. Have you ever seen survivors of shipwrecks or plain crashes describe almost dying of thirst? The doctors said it would put her in a near-sedated state. And how do they know this, and how near and how painful? If an animal is unable to eat or drink we put it out of its misery, so why can't we do so for humans?

What if she was aware on some level and didn't want to die? What if her last days were spent not only in physical pain from thirst and hunger but in emotional pain because she could not understand why the people she loved and trusted were no longer caring for her? What if, even with lessened capacity to think, she was happy. She always smiled and looked towards family members when they entered the room.

Kizmet - It's hard to listen when you're very angry and you feel threatened. Maybe it would help if you waited a couple of weeks and came back and reread this thread. I don’t mean this in any kind of negative way to you, I'm just sayin' from my own experience when we're worried about those who we perceive as unable to defend themselves we are already so revved up that we don't always read things the same way we would when we are calm and feeling safe.

There are some really excellent posts in this thread that may help you late. John M. Ford and Graydon's posts are examples. If you asked me, and I know you didn't, I would suggest you read those carefully when things have settled down.

As for starving and thirsting someone to death it does sound horrid at first thought. But when I think about ritual fasting and purification that has gone for thousands of years to help people attain enlightenment it starts to sound different.

This particular essay was very helpful to me. (I think I got the link here, if so thanks to whoever posted it.) I especially found solace in this part:

In talking with my friend, I strongly urged against putting in what we call a peg tube, a subcutaneous feeding tube. About a month or so later, she called me and said she was so grateful. Her mother died, she said, an ecstatic death. She had this wonderful kind of peaceful, serene vision that accompanied her dying days. And it occurred to me that that's what we have been depriving modern patients of, that possibility, by insisting on replenishing their food and fluids.

I hope you find some peace soon.

The Schindlers, had they been given guardianship of Terri Schiavo, planned to turn over her care to one of their other kids. They weren't going to do more than they already did: visit her occasionally. If you read the court documents, it's clear that the laboring oar in terms of constant care, was born by her huband.

And Kismet, I do not think that we stand on the slippery slope here. This is one very extreme case. To allow your own feelings to overwhelm you robs you of the ability to truly view this case.

Think about how overuse of emotion would affect the quality of medical and legal care that we have come to expect. Do you want ER docs to get all bent out of shape when a horribly injured victim is admitted to the ER room? Or do you want someone who can suspend their emotions and deliver good medical care? Do you wnat judges who take their prejudices w/ them into the court room or do you want impartial arbiters who will apply the law fairly? If Judge Greer could have brought his religious convictions into his deliberations, I think that as a Republican Baptist, he might have ruled in a far different way than he did as a Judge sworn to uphold the laws and constitution of the State of Florida and the United States. What he did was appropriate, and took far greater courage than it would have to rule the other way. I doubt if he had ruled to keep the feeding tube in that there would be any calling for his impeachment or worse, his death.

Speaking of the deaths of Catholics, the Pope just died (9:37 pm Roman time; 7:37 GMT)

As a Catholic, I can't say I'm too sad - if we believe what we believe, death is not a horror, but a transition. I worry about the future of the church, and who will be next elected, but excessive grief is not appropriate.

Requiescant in pace, both of them.

So Pope John Paul II strides to the gates of heaven, with the resurrected body of the mountain-climbing young man he once had been. He kneels and kisses the ring of Saint Peter -- what a change, he thinks, after so many people kissing my ring -- and is waved right in.

The first person he encounters in heaven itself is a young lady with a slightly less than angelic smile.

"What's the deal?" asks Terri Schiavo. "I had to wait just outside those gates for 15 years, and you got to go straight through!"

Kizmet, Terri Schiavo died years ago. That was her husk letting go the other day. She didn't have enough brain to feel pain or other stimuli. Your sister has a brain, she responds to stimuli. I can take on a bit of this because some of my disability involves brain damage and I am not worried that anybody wants me to die. Okay, maybe my crazy neighbor, but I think she'd want me to die even if I wasn't disabled.

Georgiana:

1. My emotion is hardly new and my life experience says that I'm not going to change my mind about this issue. From the beginning of this I've found those "enlightening posts" to be... less so.

2. But when I think about ritual fasting and purification that has gone for thousands of years to help people attain enlightenment it starts to sound different.

Georgiana, I'm in the middle of a seven-week long religious fast. What Terri Schiavo went through was NOT anything like what I've been going through, what religious fasters have practiced over the ages, and did not lead to Terri's enlightenment, unless you mean her death. Your comment is insensitive, insulting and offensive.

So how do you feel about the war with its "collateral damage" and the death penalty, Kizmet? Let alone the fact of all the people who die every hour here and abroad from hunger and deprivation due to exploitation, often by pious godfearing types who talk nonstop about the "culture of life," like Thomas Monaghan, but then fire pregnant women who "sinned" (unless they're too well connected for it to be safe.)

Got loopholes in your conscience for those?

--It really doesn't take too much logical thought to realize that the instances of complex, relatively rare situations like this, and the decisions made in it, in no way create the mythical "slippery slope" by which, say, using condoms will make couples have abortions, another beloved theocratic argument, or than my refusing a medical procedure ten years ago on the grounds that the possible side effects were worse than the greatest potential benefits, has prevented a single other person in my city from making the opposite choice as me, and having that surgery.

I do know why the establishment has pushed so hard this "slippery slope" talk and equations with the Nazis, though. They don't want people like you stopping to notice the very real differences between the principles as well as the practices of eugenics in the Reich - any more than they want you thinking about the mainstream churches and corporations who supported that family-values party.

Kizmet - Thank you for the invitation to argue but I must respectfully decline. Best of luck finding someone else to fulfill your needs.

Mary Dell, I agree with you completely. Giving life-and-death power over individuals to the government is exactly what I find disturbing.

You already have that. Every time I step off the plane in the US I know that I can be legally killed by the governament. I keep track of this kind of things. New York: here they can kill me. Massachussets: don't think so. Vermont: No. Texas: why YES. And so on.

I find it odd that disabled people feel they have something in common with a body sustained on life support.

Were large numbers of them doing so? This argument seemed to be used most by people who were sound in body.

There were several disabled people protesting outside the hospice.

As to whether dehydration is a brutal, painful death, my grandmother chose to starve/dehydrate herself to death. She died peacefully and calmly, happy in her decision. It was not at all painful; in her last days she slipped into a dream state. It's not how I would choose to go, but it was how she chose to go, and I honour that.

Kismet --

Used to be, really bad burn cases came in, hospitals -- some of them, some of the time -- would give those people enough morphine to make sure they died relatively quickly.

It was either that, or having them die relatively slowly, blind with pain.

This is exactly the place you are sure you don't want to go -- treatment options that involve actively killing the patient.

The great majority of doctors don't want to go there, either.

As for Terri Schiavo, she couldn't eat. Couldn't swallow food if it was placed in her mouth. Disconnecting her from life support -- which is exactly what happened -- meant she died when she was dehydrated enough to stop breathing.

The other two options are -- actively hasten her death, or ignore the best available understanding of her wishes in that situation.

People get to pick hard deaths, too, if the life they have will leave them without being held to them by medical intervention, and adding the choice of a quick death is precisely what you -- with good reason -- do not want.

Anna Feruglio Dal Dan ::: said:.

You already have that. Every time I step off the plane in the US I know that I can be legally killed by the governament. I keep track of this kind of things. New York: here they can kill me. Massachussets: don't think so. Vermont: No. Texas: why YES. And so on.

And so on...

Sheesh.

Back to the Schiavo case, the lesson I've learned from it is the importance of an explicit living will.

Anna--

New York State does not have the death penalty: the state Court of Appeals [the highest state court] has found the state's death penalty law unconstitutional, and (to my pleased surprise) the legislature hasn't passed a new one. (The court ruling was straightforward enough that it more or less said "here's the constitutional problem with the law, you can fix it by passing a new law without this piece.")

Yes, anywhere in the US you could be subject to a federal death penalty--but if you're sorting by state, New York is as safe as anywhere.

A part of the problem we have is that medical technology now makes it possible for severely injured people to be kept alive.

You can see it in all sorts of ways. Terri Schiavo was living with no brain. The most recent VC went to a soldier who had an RPG go off next to his head, and needed major brain surgery.

Look up "triage". We're lucky to live in a world with enough resources, quantity and quality, that Doctors don't need to let patients die. They don't have to choose. Though you might have to wait a long time for treatment for minor injuries in an ER.

Kismet - many terminal cancer patients choose to starve rather than suffer any more with the cancer. As I understand it, death will often come by morphine overdose or by pneumonia before starvation, but there's no guarantee of that.

The way it works at the hospice my friend died in, nothing is done to prolong life, but nor is anything done to induce death. So her nutrition tube was removed (although she could have popsicles when she asked for them - she couldn't digest actual food any more, because of her surgeries) and no antibiotics were given to fight pneumonia, and she was given as much morphine as she needed to take away her pain, but not any more than that.

Morphine somewhat paralyzes the lungs, and taking it combined with lying in bed gives nearly everyone pneumonia if it goes on for long enough. In her case she went into a coma about a week after her nutrition was stopped, and died a day after that. She was lucid up until the day before she died, and while she was extremely thin, and clearly anxious because the fluid in her lungs was making it very hard to breathe, she wasn't in pain, for the first time in months. Starvation wasn't the cause of death in her case but the weakness it caused helped the process along.

So it's not actually that unusual for people to choose to starve to death. There are many deaths that are harder and less dignified.

Worddude - if you read the GAL's brief on the case, you'll see that in fact she did not really respond to family members.

Pericat:

As my anatomy class was decades ago, I did some reading. It turns out that there's a lot more to determining "brain death" than simply a flatline EEG.

According to How Stuff Works By definition, "brain death" is "when the entire brain, including the brain stem, has irreversibly lost all function."

Terri Schiavo still had brainstem function, which is how she continued to breathe without a respirator. According to MedicineNet "According to experts, her condition has always fallen into a kind of gray zone between brain death and physical life."

So she wasn't brain dead. She may have had a flatline EEG but her brainstem is still functioning.

The standard of death used to be not breathing, no heart function. It then moved to "brain dead" with its concomitant test results (see the HowStuffWorks link for the additional tests - why don't they ever mention those on the tv medical shows?) and now the standard is moving again, to PVS with a functioning brainstem.

Bellatrys: no loopholes, thanks for asking. I've been a pacifist my entire life, but I will confess to trying to figure out what my response is to the question "Do I stand aside while the innocent are killed, or do I fight to protect them?" As of now, I'm still conflicted.

I'm kind of confused by your last paragraph.

Graydon: I'm convinced, if nothing else, that for the most part, there are people of good conscience on all sides of this issue. Unfortunately, this issue failed in compassion in every direction and will likely become the legal precedent for the next case.

But euthanasia is itself the slippery slope: take a look at what's happening in the Netherlands where doctors are making life and death decisions without the consent of their patients. I have a friend outside Amsterdam who knows many older people who are terrified to go to the hospital for any care, minor or major, for fear of a doctor's decision that will lead to their death.

I do not accept this philosophical duality that the mind is separate from the body, and if the mind no longer functions at some level, then it is useless for the body to continue to live. If it were true, we'd have already thrown Terri's breathing body into a tomb. We know better; we know that there's life. I want to preserve it, not because she's going to get better, but because she's alive and there is value in her to me, whether or not she ever speaks another word or she has another thought. Her physical body - not a husk or a shell or whatever other euphemism has been (occasionally disrepectfully) used on this site - has worth. If we only value someone because of their ability to think, is this simply the inverse of only appreciating value of a body?

Renatus: I've found two links that are perhaps less suspicious to you, as they aren't blatantly pro-life agenda. It's somewhat difficult to find non-prolife references to the Baby Doe case of 1982 on the net, as Al Gore hadn't invented it yet, but I've found these:
A civil libertarian's POV on Baby Doe and this about the Baby Doe case. There are others on pro-life websites, if you care to google for them.

Mike the Headless Chicken pretty obviously had brainstem function but higher functions were not recoverable. Some say his original head was catfood and a substitute brain in a jar toured with him. Quite possibly brainstem function need not imply other functions can be recovered in other species.

Any 2 cases can always be distinguished on the facts - to use the fact of distinction to deny a slippery slope then proves too much by proving that a slippery slope never exists.

We're lucky to live in a world with enough resources, quantity and quality, that Doctors don't need to let patients die. They don't have to choose. Well yes for some values of patients perhaps not for other values of patients or perhaps not for other values of world.

I doubt anybody chooses domicile based on choice of law in this area - voting with the feet, or even choice of hospital or hospice - but it does seem to me a reasonable area for Federalism.

kizmet writes:"So she wasn't brain dead. She may have had a flatline EEG but her brainstem is still functioning."

But the parts that make someone human were gone.

Her heart and lungs were merely working to support the function of her stomach and intestines. Call me crazy, but being human is more than just the ability to make poop.

If someone hooked a digestive tract up to a heart/lung machine and a dialysis machine, you'd pretty much have the same thing. I doubt anyone would worry about shutting it off, though.

kizmet writes: " I want to preserve it, not because she's going to get better, but because she's alive and there is value in her to me"

She's not your toy.

Buy a teddy bear if you want something to make you feel warm inside.

Kismet writes:

but because she's alive and there is value in her to me,

this is the heart of the concept - her life still had value to you, to her parents, and to many, many other people. But all that should matter is what value her life had to HER.

As for the changing definition of "dead," you make a good point, but this is the price we pay for technological advancement. The standard of death used to be not breathing...because there wasn't a way to artifically make you breathe. Larry Niven's law #9: Ethics change with Technology.

Kismet --

I'm personally sympathetic to the idea of letting severely ill people die when they want to; that necessarily involves some interaction with doctors. There is no compassion in a situation where people are required to endure as much pain as possible in the absence of hope.

The actual Dutch law doesn't even create a right to die; it makes assisted suicide non-criminal if a list of criteria are met. Two of those criteria are the lucidity of the patient and a durable specific request by the patient.

(Could this be abused? Certainly. But that's true of any system with people in it; look up the stats on mis-perscription sometime.)

And you know, I really meant --

It is not mete that we should, of our own fear or desire or need, refuse to another guest that they should depart.

People are themselves, and fundamentally ought to make choices out of their own desires, not the desires of the people around them.

Kizmet, Let's say you were in the midst of a 6 week lenten fast that you performed every year for your religion because of a deeply held conviction that this was something that you HAD to do. And someone in your immediate family decided that you were endangering your health by doing this because of your general condition, and went and got a court order forcing you to eat and drink.

Can you see the least bit of analogy there? If someone does not want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures, then the wishes of those around him/her do not control.

The Judge, after hearing all the evidence, the testimony of Michael Schiavo, his brother and sister in law, and the Schindlers and a friend of Ms. Schiavo's--after being present and observing their demeanor as they testified, ruled that there was clear and convincing evidence that Terri Schiavo had not wanted to be kept alive if she was in a vegetative state. Why can you not let it go? The fact finder had much more information before him than we will ever have. Sometimes, you just have to let go and let g*d as they say.

Let go.

kizmet said her sister had the intelligence of a 5-year old. That's intelligent enough that, if you pinched her arm, she could say "That hurts! Stop it!" I don't see any possible comparison to Terri Schiavo's condition.

And while Jon H's "teddy bear" remark was blunt, I think it was also very on-point.

Back in 2000, when my wife Hilde's crumbling cervical spine had to be taken apart and put back together with bolts and cables and chunks of hipbone, we were told before the surgery that besides a 1-in-7 chance of dying on the operating table, there was also a strong chance, if the surgery encountered any problems, that she might come out of surgery as a brain-damaged quadriplegic.

In such a case, she made it clear (verbally and in a living will) that she would not want her life sustained by any extraordinary measures. She's been dealing with increasing physical disabilities since her early 20's (severe degenerative rheumatoid arthritis), but the thought of losing her mental facilities as well was too much to accept.

And in such a case, OF COURSE I would have honored her wishes. OF COURSE I would have allowed her to pass on. How could I possibly have NOT honored her wish, and still called myself a loving husband? Even if losing her would have plunged me into a despair that would have been simply... unspeakable.

For many of us I suspect such questions were first raised in print long before they became real:

"Kana swallowed, his mouth dry. For an instant he was back again in the chapel on Terra, half the Galaxy away from this Fronnian wood. He had been drilled in the Ritual, he knew what had to be done. But somehow, in spite of all the solemn instructions, he had never really expected to be called upon to give the Last Grace—"

“If it has to be done, a man — a real man — shoots his own dog himself; he doesn’t hire a proxy who may bungle it.”

There’s a nice gimmick story of a man trying to scratch his wife’s eyes out - with no organs left for harvest the machines may be turned off...

Poul Anderson has a story in which the others – the aliens – demand a painful death as a ritual. Perhaps based on “the North American natives of the Great Lakes ….demand that captives should play a co-operative role in the ritual torture that led to their deaths.” John Keegan, who then quotes “The torture continued throughout the night, the victim being revived when he fainted and given food and shown kindness”

Lots of thoughts through the ages and like the mothers throwing their children under the Juggernaut ( substitute Melek or Moloch if you prefer to think such things never happened in India) each likely thought it the logical thing to do at the time.

I have no faith that our society has the last word so I would not embody incomplete thoughts in national law.

I know what I prefer for myself.

When it has to be done I'll not rush with a shotgun myself nor choose to send an agent to stop a man from shooting his own dog.

Kizmet,

What if the case had gone the other way? What if the judges had ruled that, despite Terri's wishes, despite the decision of her guardian, the government's "culture of life" took precedence?

Fast-forward a few years to a time we hope will never happen, when your sister falls gravely ill. Suppose, furthermore, that the government in power has different priorities. Maybe they're deeply linked to the business community, and obsessed with cost above all else.

You and your family make some care decisions about your sister - deciding, perhaps, to get her some expensive heart surgery - which do not fit in with the government's beliefs. Would they look at the Schiavo case and say, "That's not a precedent...that was about life?"

No. They'd look at it as a precedent that the government can interfere in the private decisions of the family when those decisions are inconsistent with whichever values they espouse.

Given the choice, I'm glad that the courts upheld her guardian's right to follow her expressed wishes, even if those private decisions did not agree with the government's dogma.

It's an issue of freedom (a word we've heard a lot less of lately).

Moe,

I am in the middle of the Lenten fast, so your point got my attention.

However, there is nothing at all similar in the cases. A fast for religious purposes does not compare in any way to someone being starved to death. A fast should not end in death: in the Orthodox Christian practice of faith (which I am) a fast that would lead to death or severally compromising the health is forbidden (diabetics or pregnant/nursing women, for examples.)

Terri was not fasting, she was starved to death.

There are a couple of points that I have not seen mentioned. First, is that anorexia (as a bioloical process) occurs naturally in many terminally ill patients.

In such a situation there in typically neither hunger or thirst, and so to say that a terminally ill patients "starves to death" is misleading at best. In fact food and water, frequently taken by patients not due to appetite but to apease family members, can cause patients pain.

(If I remember correctly from my readings, it is because the body is shutting down, and one of the first processes to shut down is the digestive system.)

The second thing is that Graydon and someone else mentioned giving a patient enough morphine at the end of life to deaden the pain. Legally and ethically, a patient who is in unremitting pain at the end of life can be sedated into unconsciousness to relieve that pain, even if doing so hastens death. The practice is called terminal sedation and has been accepted by the Supreme Court (See: Vacco v. Quill) and the Catholic church.

The actual Dutch law doesn't even create a right to die; it makes assisted suicide non-criminal if a list of criteria are met. Two of those criteria are the lucidity of the patient and a durable specific request by the patient.

Unfortunately the Dutch law has had major problems in application. Both assisted suicide AND euthanasia are allowed. And the guidelines set up for the practice are not being enforced, and involuntary euthanasia (killing a patient against their wishes) is being practiced by some doctors, and doctors are not making sure that patients are not being coerced by their families.

Anyone looking at the Netherlands for guidance on end-of-life care might come to agree with me that neither euthanasia nor physician assisted suicide can be morally applied. However neither was the case with Terri Schiavo. Her case involved the removal of unwanted medical treatment, which has been a legal right going back to English common law, (unwanted medical treatment is a battery).

As a teacher, I've worked with some students who had generally healthy bodies, but very diminished cognitive function. These little children could not imitate gestures or vocalize sounds, and they had only reached the developmental milestones of 18 months when they were approaching 5 years old.

No one, however, would EVER mistake them for being in a vegetative state. They were clearly engaged with life. Despite the fact that they had not achieved reliable communication skills, they clearly had needs and desires that their caregivers could respond to. All of them had some ability to learn, sometimes in surprising ways. One completely nonverbal child suddenly began to babble when he was in my class, after years of speech therapy in which he never made a sound. I heard that, the following year, he said his first words.

My beliefs have changed as a result of working with these children and their families. I believe that people are highly adaptible and can live with hardship that they never imagined that they could bear, IF they are able to perceive the situation in a realistic light. All caregivers hope for dramatic improvements in those they care for, but sometimes the improvement is not dramatic, or does not come at all. And what happens to the child then?

Do we love our children because of who we hope they might be? Or might have been? Do we refuse to accept them as they are, hoping they will change to fit our ideas of how they should be? Are we ever really able to separate the reality of the human being in front of us from the hopes, dreams, fears and desires that we have for that human being?

I do see why some disabled folks might see the Schiavo case as ominous. However, I think this may be because society as a whole has not achieved an accurate understanding of what it means to be disabled -- i.e. that those lives could BE worth living. There is a fear among many people that they could not bear a life with a disability, especially a cognitive disability. That issue, though, at least for me, is separate from the issue of a vegetative state. Perhaps the issue of disability has entered the public eye as a result of this case, however tenuous the link may be, and so people respond based on that.

Kizmet, you do not understand my point. sigh.

In someone else's view you are harming yourself by your fast--they are looking at it