How do you feel about this? Strongly enough to call your Congressmen?

This is getting ugly. This has happened several times, albeit without so much fanfare and congressional interest. What a travesty in all aspects.

That's fine...her ticketed destination is upward. Those that pushed to have an innocent person starved to death...down, down, down. Hopefully, lucifer will pull one of those great cosmic jokes and allow them a few millenia of painful starvation for their choice in this matter....

Don't get me wrong, I'm no zealot...and I do believe in assisted suicide and DNR orders. Hell, if I were ever placed "on machines" to continue living, I already have the signed docs declaring my will not to live like that....But, this is different.

The judge disregarded a congressional subpoena, the idiot. Tampering with a federal witness can carry the death penalty - which of course makes this case all the more absurd, now...

meanwhile -- Bush cuts funding to veterans with traumatic brain injuries

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050318/NEWS/503180384/1016/FEATURES07

The judge was right in the respect that a quickie congressional committee can not invalidate years of court rulings. Just as when Jeb Bush passed a quick law ( Teri's Law ) to order the feeding tube reinserted was illegal.


If Congress is allowed disregard the legal system put in place then this would set a dangerous precedent.

I am asking this sincerely and not with sarcasm - if she did not want to be artifically kept alive in a vegatative state, how is this different?

If you don't want to be kept artificially alive like that, what makes you so sure that she would?

Talen I agree, unfortunately it seems people want to debate symantics and not the basic issues of the whole point.

By debating off topic and tangented conversations they all detract from the simplistic actions that need be taken.

Its unfortunate that people are so hoodwinked by fast talking sooth sayers that tend to elude and detract from the basic premise this is all about.
But I guess thats humanity at its worst, or the Stupid leading the stupid while defaming the sain.

It won't be Satin or God that ends humanity it will be the misinformed and con artists that will do us all in.

This alone cold spur off so many subtopics that it isn't even funny.
But thats already what has been done isn't it?
People have been misinformed, misused and lead by both political and religious ramblings.

Sorry folks I am about basic human needs and functions.

If the woman can survive without machines who are we as a human race to take away her food for the mere political advancments of a fowled governmental system.
Sorry wrong is wrong and stupid is stupid.
I don't think when the woman told her husband "Don't let them keep me alive on machines" she meant "Dont feed me and let me starve death as one day you never know I may heal myself and wake up."
I think it was more in the context of "if I have to have a machine to keep my heart pumping and my breath breathing pull the plug." but not starving her to death.

Oh well, I am just one voice in a crowd of many.
I may not be heard but the basic points still stand.
When people can realize that then we can look at better methods of morality.

Shadow

Well with the feeding tube gone she will still live for quite a while until she starves to death.

I'd agree with you in principle...but as stated, this case is different.

The husband is the only one who says she wants to die, no one else can back up his statement.

The husband has blocked any in-depth testing of her nervous system, no CAT scan or MRI in at least the last 12 years.

This is speculative: Her brother alluded to some tests that were performed on her right after she was put under care that indicated some fractures in her bones and some soft tissue damage around her neck. This may not mean much, but, the husband has also had documented problems from prior relationships that indicated some abuse in those cases...Now, I'm no conspiracy nut but, this all becomes kinda suspect when you read that the husband has had a judge order her remains cremated right after death...with no autopsy.

That aside, I ask you; is it more humane to allow someone to exist against their wishes in a vegetative state, or starve them to death. I'm wonder, if her choice back then was to not continue on living if hooked to machine, would she have made the same choice if someone asked her about starving to death versus living with machine assistance? Also, would she feel the same about her choice if it pertained JUST to a feeding tube (instead of being on a heart & lung machine)? I dunno...who could?

Your post has given me pause. I need to call my lawyer on monday and change that part of my living will to say that if I am declared to be in a persistant vegetative state and can breathe and have have heart function without aid of a machine but I still need to be fed then please don't under any circumstances administer food to me via a tube.

As it stands now it only says kept alive via machines.

I agree - it has given me pause for thought as well and personally, I would not want them to even begin the administration of food through a tube on me if I were in the same circumstances.



I agree, I think the political band wagon on this is disgusting on both sides. I guess that I am just speaking from a more emotional side, in personally never wanting to be forced to persist in a vegatative state. OTOH - there are others who feel as strongly about wanting to be kept alive as I feel about not wanting it.

It is my hope that after all the court appearences over the course of 16 years, her husband has somehow proven to the judges that not wanting to be in this state really was her wish, or the court would not have allowed the tube to be removed to begin with.

.

What I'm saying is, how different is that? Isn't it still killing her? It's in effect pulling the plug, there isn't much of a difference.

Edit: Well maybe there is if you consider that it's "just" a feeding tube. Hm

Heck, I don't think people should even be ALLOWED to exist in a vegetative state!
My view of the world is that your self resides entirely in your brain and your body is basically a life support system.
If your brain no longer works, you have effectively died and the big fleshy shell around you should freaking be discarded.
But yeah, send her over to her whiney parents so they can take a good hard look at what used to host their daughter, before deciding to throw it in the garbage bin where it belongs.
Keeping a person in a vegetative state makes about as much sense to me as eating a banana and trying to keep the peel alive.
It's a needless waste of resources, and a source of much grief.

If you can't feed yourself you die...some may say well we can feed her but is that what she wanted?

I don't believe anyone in this thread can honestly tell me they would want to live like that. This is a tragedy carried out over many years....what parent wants to let go of their child or of hope that one day that child could be cured. Unfortunately there is no cure and she's their child in name only...the daughter they knew and loved left 16 years ago.

Here is the opinion of the independent guardian appointed after the last attempt to remove the feeding tube.

Posted on Sat, Mar. 19, 2005

LEGAL GUARDIAN

Schiavo's plight still weighs on former guardian

The man appointed in 2003 to act as a guardian for Terri Schiavo has not forgotten the harrowing task of trying to imagine himself in her place.

BY CARA BUCKLEY

[email]cbuckley@herald.com[/email]

TAMPA - Two dark scenarios haunt Jay Wolfson even now, 1 ½ years after his brief appointment to be a neutral arbiter, a guardian, an unbiased observer, the one man asked by the state to stand in Terri Schiavo's shoes.

One is that the severely brain-damaged woman is in a terrible lightless place, aware of nothing at all but a yawning, endless hopelessness.

The other is that even though he never elicited a response from her, despite all the pleading and cajoling he did at her bedside, that he might have missed some subtle, near invisible signs that she was somewhere in there, aware.

''Imagine not having hope, and being aware that's all you had, was no hope. The horror. It's like not being, but knowing that you're not,'' Wolfson said recently in his Tampa-area office. ``That's one thing. The other is, what if she's knocking on a door somewhere and I was walking through all the wrong corridors and I missed it. What if?''

Wolfson was appointed by a Florida court in fall 2003 to be Schiavo's guardian ad litem, or guardian at law, to deduce Schiavo's best interests and represent neither her husband nor her parents but Terri Schiavo herself.


NO VESTED INTEREST


This makes Wolfson the rarest of people, especially now, as the furor over the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube rages. He is one of the very few people to have spent extended time with Schiavo and gauged her level of awareness without having a vested interest at stake.

In the end, after spending long hours at Schiavo's bedside for 20 days out of his 30-day appointment, and after pouring over 30,000 pages of legal documents, Wolfson came to the conclusion that medical evidence behind Schiavo's diagnosis was credible, and that she indeed was in a permanent vegetative state.

It was not the conclusion he hoped to make.

''You want to weigh in on life as opposed to death,'' said Wolfson. ``You want some way to elicit a response.''

Wolfson's appointment was made after the Florida Legislature passed ''Terri's Law'' in 2003, a move that allowed doctors to reinsert her feeding tube despite a judge's ruling it be removed. The law has since been struck down as unconstitutional.

His tenure as Schiavo's guardian at law began on Oct. 31. Wolfson, who has law and doctoral degrees and is currently a distinguished service professor of public health and medicine at the University of South Florida, was tasked with deciding whether Schiavo's feeding tube should be removed and whether more tests should be done to assess her ability to swallow.


TIME WITH SCHIAVO


He scoured 13 years worth of legal documents and extensively interviewed Schiavo's husband, Michael, and her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. His time with Schiavo was spent trying to determine whether she was aware of and interactive with the world.

At first, walking into Schiavo's room, he was struck by her presence, even though he knew in advance she drifted between wakefulness and sleep.

''She's a person, like you or I, and the first disconcerting part is that she's awake,'' Wolfson said.

And when awake, Schiavo's eyes would roll about the room. She made random noises that sounded like groaning or the start of a laugh or cry. But court documents had revealed that Schiavo's cerebral cortex, where reason and emotions are housed, had degenerated to fluid. So Wolfson set about trying to determine whether Schiavo's noises and jerks were merely reflexive or if they indicated something more.

He played Elton John CDs for her and Bach and Mozart and music from the late 1980s when she was in her 20s, prior to her collapse. He held her hands, squeezing them, and stroked her hair and face.

He put his face up close to hers and tried to make eye contact, pleading desperately, trying to will her into giving him any kind of sign.

'I would beg her, `Please Terri, help me,' '' he said. 'You want to believe there's some connection. You hope she's going to sit up in bed and say, `Hey I'm really here, but don't tell anybody.' Or, 'I'm really here, tell everybody!' ''

But Schiavo never made eye contact. When Wolfson visited her when her parents were there, she never made eye contact with them either, he said. And for all of Wolfson's pleadings and coaxing, he never got what he most wanted: a sign.

''I felt like there was something distinctive about whoever Terri is,'' Wolfson said. ``But I was not clear that it was there, inside the vessel.''

During those 30 days, Wolfson was plagued by nightmares. He imagined waking up in her body and being locked in. Sometimes he woke up screaming.

Wolfson concluded that the medical and legal evidence behind Schiavo's diagnosis of being in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS, was credible. But he still felt that for all their expertise, those medical experts would never truly know where Schiavo was, or if she was anywhere.

Wolfson was dismayed to learn Friday that Barbara Weller, an attorney for the Schindlers, claimed that Schiavo tried to speak. ''Terri does not speak,'' he said. ``To claim otherwise reduces her to a fiction.''

One thing Wolfson never doubted was that for all their intense, mutual antagonism, both Michael Schiavo and Terri's parents loved and adored her.


EXCELLENT CARE


She was cared for incredibly well, Wolfson said. Her hair was always combed, and after 15 years of being incapacitated, she never developed a bedsore. In fact, Wolfson said, until about seven years ago, Michael Schiavo had Terry's makeup and hair done regularly and her clothes changed every day, to the point were hospice staff protested that he was being overly demanding about her care.

Also, Wolfson concluded, Terri Schiavo would never have tolerated the enormous, ''omnipresent'' acrimony between her husband and parents.

In the 38-page report he wrote afterward, Wolfson said the rift could only be bridged, and the best decision for Schiavo made, if both sides agreed to fresh, independent medical testing. This would include an assessment of whether Schiavo could swallow anything other than spit, which is a reflexive or automatic activity. Only if new testing showed she could not, or it showed that Schiavo showed no hope of improvement, Wolfson wrote, should the feeding tube be pulled.

Both parties were on the verge of agreeing to these new conditions, Wolfson said, but Michael Schiavo's lawyer was fighting the constitutionality of Terri's Law, the very law that resulted in Wolfson's appointment. Once Terri's Law was struck down by the Florida Supreme Court, Wolfson's conclusions became legally moot.

Wolfson still refuses to give his own opinion on whether Schiavo's feeding tube should or should not have been pulled. But he will say, as a parent of three sons, that after doing everything one can, sometimes the time comes to let go.

''When it evolves beyond that person into issues that are other people's issues or are broader issues, it becomes less objectifiable,'' said Wolfson. ``It's hard to be objective anyway. This is the kind of thing you don't wish on anybody.''

I'm sure there's plenty of disabled people that can't feed themselves out there, so I don't understand why that matters.

Here's a problem with making the decision beforehand--how do you know you'll feel the same way when you're actually put in the position? Yeah, we may say "I'd never want to live like that" while lounging around watching TV. Well, of course not...who would? But does that mean you'd rather be gone entirely? Maybe, but maybe not.

Medically speaking..is it possible that the diagnosis is partially wrong? People with nerve damage can "learn" to bypass the damage and recover, right? Could that be what's happening here, to some small degree? As much as we know about the human brain, there's still probably alot more we don't know about it, right?

And if this continues, is it going to weaken protection for the disabled...?

Now I've only heard this verbally, so I'm not sure, but I've heard that there was a definite response that sounded like an attempt at speech to answer "THE" question. And, so I'm told, it sounded like she was saying she didn't want to die. Anyone have an actual news link to what I'm trying to describe? I think it was a lawyer saying this (hmm..)