Wineke: One Schiavo question still unanswered

[question everything]

Wineke: One Schiavo question still unanswered

Bill WinekeWisconsin State Journal

June 15, 2005

(snip)

So much for the national controversy, which dominated the news for weeks. So much for all the medical experts who went on television assuring us that Schiavo might recover with therapy.

So much for the claims of friends and family that she followed them with her eyes - not likely if she was blind.

So much for the emergency actions of Congress aimed at overturning a federal court decision and so much for President Bush's decision to fly back to Washington in the middle of the night to sign the legislation.

Finally, so much for all the accusations that Schiavo's husband might have strangled her and caused her condition.

(snip)

The question the autopsy doesn't answer and could not answer is this: Did her husband and society have a moral obligation to maintain her existence anyway?

(snip)

The counter-argument is also powerful: Every dollar we spend keeping alive a body that is in a permanently vegetative state (some ethicists prefer the term "permanently unconscious") is a dollar that can't be used for the care of someone else, someone who, presumably, might have a chance at meaningful life.

(snip)


http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/index.php?ntid=43756&ntpid=9

[NVMojo]

1. I had a fight with a fundie today ...

who tried to tell me the hubby is the one who injured in the first place and how could she possibly be blind when the family had that film of her following the balloons with her eyes. It became to exhausting to reach through the bullshit in this fundie's mind ...

[NorCalDem]

2. Did you tell him

that the parents filmed Terri for years practically, and then found 2 minutes of good material to present to the country. I said many times during the whole ordeal that they should let the people who were trying to take her food and water inside, and then when they discovered that she had neither the capacity to chew or swallow, they might finally believe that she wasn't going to get outta bed anytime soon.

[Mythsaje]

3. I might have finally said

"I would have probably gotten farther discussing it with HER than I'm getting with you.

There's nothing worse than an atrophied brain, don't you think?"

Okay... I wouldn't have SAID it, but I would've been thinking it. When I was younger, I might have said it, but that usually resulted in bad things happening to me.

Now I try to keep my big mouth shut more often than not.

[burrowowl]

4. When someone is in a vegetative

state as shown by the MRIs, etc. The autopsy was so to speak: frosting on the cake!

"The question the autopsy doesn't answer and could not answer is this: Did her husband and society have a moral obligation to maintain her existence anyway?"

The poor husk of a person should not be kept alive by artificial means.
Just think how many people, whose thinking brains are not dead, die because care is not given to them. How much preventive medicine could be given, etc.
Terri's family are crazier than a loon (shouldn't say this about loons) and need treatment, which they probably can't afford.

[yowzayowzayowza]

5. The real lingering question is ...

Wouldn't a lethal injection have been a more humane action rather than allowing her to slowly degenerate?

I've made it WELL known to Mrs Yowza that I'd prefer to suffer the needle.