NationStates Jolt Archive

Common Myths Perpetuated in the Schiavo Case:

1. Terri might be in this state because her husband beat her and he does not want her to wake up and spread the truth.

Wrong. She is in this state because of a severe heart attack brought on by a potassium imbalance most likely due to bulimia.

2. Terri has a chance, no matter how small, to recover. Therefore, she should not be allowed to die.

False. Nearly her entire cerebral cortex has liquified. Even if we were somehow able to regrow it, Terri wouldn't be there. All the nueral connections that made Terri Terri would be gone. Of course, the idea of regrowing a cortex is pure science fiction, anyway.

3. The husband wants her to die to collect insurance/medical loans/blah blah blah.

False. He turned down an offer of just over 11 million dollars to which the only condition was to turn over legal guardianship of Terri to her parents/

4. The husband wants her to die so he can marry his mistress.

Wrong again. In Florida, there are laws that would allow him to divorce Terri without her consent, thus allowing him to marry his mistress.

5. The husband is the only one we have to testify that Terri did not want to be in this state.

Still false. It has been established through more than a dozen different court cases and several witnesses that are neither the husband or members of the immediate family that Terri's wishes to not exist in such a state had indeed been verbalized on numerous occasions.

6. She isn't braindead! She responds to things like balloons and her family!

Mostly wrong. What is right is that her brain isn't dead. The only thing is that the cortex, the portion of the brain responsible for concious thought, decision making, and several other important sentient functions is now almost entirely liquified. All that is left of it is spinal fluid.

However, parts of her brain responsible for reflex and other unconcious things still exist and are responsible for the several hours of footage showing her responding to stimuli (but to be fair, those several hours are out of hundreds, even thousands of hours where she didn't).

7. Removing her feeding tube will be immensily painful!

This one is actually true in a way, but, unfortunately, that is the only way to allow her to go. Euthensia (sp) is not legal in Florida or the United States as a whole, so removing her life support (and under Florida state law, feeding tubes count as life support) is the only thing legally possible.

Anything I forgot?

Quoted again for reminders.

By this logic do you also oppose the use of incubators for premature babies? After all they would die if it were not for the machines in almost all cases.
That's apples & oranges. With preemies there is an expectation of a life with intervention. Watering an artificial plant with the expecttion of life for the sake of the parents is delusional. There comes a time to let go.

Activist Legislators
The boundless overreaching behind Congress' new Schiavo bill.
By Dahlia Lithwick

Whether Terri Schiavo will live or die in the coming days has come down to this: Can federal district judge James Whittemore set aside virtually every bedrock constitutional principle on which this nation was founded, just so members of the United States Congress may constitutionalize the nowhere-to-be-found legal principle that a "culture of life" is a good thing?

This morning's decision by Congress and President Bush—to authorize new federal legislation that will obliterate years of state court litigation, and justify re-inserting a feeding tube into Terri Schiavo, based on new and illusory federal constitutional claims—is not about law. It is congressional activism, plain and simple; legislative overreaching and hubris taken to absurd extremes.

Let's be clear: The piece of legislation passed late last night, the so-called "Palm Sunday Compromise," has nothing whatever to do with the rule of law. The rule of law in this country holds that this is a federalist system—in which private domestic matters are litigated in state, not federal courts. The rule of law has long provided that such domestic decisions are generally made by competent spouses, as opposed to parents, elected officials, popular referendum, or the demands of Randall Terry. The rule of law also requires a fundamental separation of powers—in which legislatures do not override final, binding court decisions solely because the outcome is not the one they like. The rule of law requires comity between state and federal courts—wherein each respects and upholds the jurisdiction and authority of the other. The rule of law requires that we look skeptically at legislation aimed at mucking around with just one life to the exclusion of any and all similarly situated individuals.

And what is the overwhelming constitutional value that supersedes each of these centuries-old legal notions? Evidently, Congress has a secret, super-textual constitutional role as the nation's caped crusaders—its members authorized to leap into phone booths around the world and fly back to Washington in a single bound whenever the "culture of life" is in peril. Republicans acknowledged this weekend that their views on "the sanctity of life" trump even their convictions about federalism. Or, as Tom DeLay put it, when asked how he reconciles this bill with conservative calls to keep the federal government out of state matters, "We, as Congress, have every right to make sure that the constitutional rights of Terri Schiavo are protected, and that's what we're doing."

This congressional authority to simply override years of state court fact-finding brings with it other superpowers, including the power of gratuitous name-calling: Members of Congress unable to pronounce Schiavo's name just last week are denouncing her husband as an adulterer and common law bigamist who withheld proper medical care from her. I wonder what they'd say about my parenting—or yours—if they decided to make a federal case out of every domestic-custody dispute currently resolved in state court proceedings.

Members of Congress have apparently also had super-analytical powers conferred upon them, as well. Senate Majority Leader, and heart surgeon, Bill Frist felt confident last week—after reviewing an hour of videotape—in offering a medical diagnosis of Schiavo's condition, blithely second-guessing the court-appointed neurologists who evaluated her for days and weeks. His colleagues are similarly self-appointed neurological experts. Years of painstaking litigation, assessment, and evaluation by state courts are dismissed by Tom DeLay as the activist doings of a "little judge sitting in a state district court in Florida." Only the most extraordinary levels of congressional hubris could allow a group of elected citizens to substitute their personal medical, legal, and ethical judgments for those of the doctors, judges, and guardians who have been intimately involved with this heartbreakingly sad case for years.

And shouldn't we worry—just a bit—when in the name of a "culture of life" Congress enacts legislation that singles out just one Florida family for special legal standing? Frist calls this "a unique bill" that "should not serve as a precedent for future legislation." Yet Schiavo is just one of up to 35,000 people in this country in a persistent vegetative state as the result of trauma, drug overdose, or other medical complications. Remember what happened to Élián Gonzáles when the federal government decided to embroil itself—just this once—in a custody dispute? Why does Terri Schiavo alone warrant the legislative intercession of these self-appointed crusaders? (Not because this is a "great political issue" that would appeal to the base and defeat a Florida Democrat, according to a one-page memo distributed to Republican senators last week.) The last time Florida had to contend with a good-for-one-ride-only legal intervention of this sort was in Bush v. Gore.

Take a peek into any chat room (or this Fray in 15 minutes) and you will find hundreds of individuals who personally know that Terri Schiavo is—despite voluminous testimony by her doctors and her guardians ad litem and the findings of multiple judges—capable of laughter and responsiveness and a full recovery. How do they know these things? The same way their elected representatives do: They watched a video clip. And because anyone who disagrees with the video is a murderer and torturer, the state court judge in this case requires constant police protection: The standard-bearers of the "culture of life" keep threatening to kill him.

The reason we have courts, the reason we traditionally assign these brutal fact-finding responsibilities to those courts, is that intimate legal custody and life-or-death decisions should not be determined based on popular referenda. They need to be rooted, as much as possible, in rock-solid legal rules.

This is not a slippery-slope case, where it's a short hop from "executing" those in persistent vegetative conditions to killing anyone with a disability. This is a case in which an established right-to-refuse-treatment claim, litigated for years up and down through the appeals courts, is being thwarted by parents with no custodial claim to their child. By stepping in merely to sow doubt as to whom Terri Schiavo's proper custodian might be, rather than creating some new constitutional right to a "culture of life," Congress has simply called the existing legal regime into doubt without establishing a new one. This new law offers no clarity about what the new federal claims might be. It just forum-shops for a more tractable judge.

You can put aside the doctrine of federalism for Terri Schiavo, and the principles of separation of powers, and comity, and of deference to finality and the rule of law. But you'd want to be certain, on the day you do so, that what you're sacrificing them for some concrete legal value that matters a whole lot more. Subordinating a centuries-old culture of law to an amorphous, legally meaningless "culture of life," is not a decision to be taken over a weekend.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2115124/fr/ifr/nav/ais/

Actually, according to the program I'm watching at the moment (Scarborough Country), some of what you have posted is false.

1.) From what one doctor said, there is no evidence that she had a heartattack. When one has a heartattack, the heart releases something into the blood stream ( I don't recall the name). There was no trace of this in her blood stream.

3.) Again, according to the program I'm watching, the husband received sums of money that he was supposed to use on her health expenses. He instead used these funds to pay for lawyers to argue to get the plug pulled on her. Furthermore, the husband refused to allow doctors to treat infections that she developed. This hindered her recovery, though I admitt I have no knowledge of the state of her cerebral cortex.

6.) This may or may not be in agreement to your statement, but the doctor who was on the program I was watching reported that she was able to follow commands, and such. He reported that she is better off than patients with cerebral pulsey. It should be noted that we do not kill off patients with cerebral pulsey.

Some other issues: A Rabbi on said program pointed out the following things. If someone tries to commit suicide, do we not try to stop them? Does anyone remember the so called "Dr. Death?" (I don't remember his real name). He was the guy who performed a number of mercy killings, and is now serving a sentence in prision. Also, the florida state judge was also criticized. He apparently has bad sight. So, instead of viewing the videos of the women for himself, he let his staff member view it, and tell him what they thought. I believe that when someone's life is on the line, the person who makes the descison must see and hear the full facts for themselves.

Dude I doubt Terri was going around, you know I would just LOVE to have an attack of Bulimia, oh God please give me an attack of Bulimia so that I can lay in bed for the next 15 years.

That still does nothing to deny the fact that she had low levels of calcium and potassium in her blood that caused the event that put her in this vegetative state, and that it was a direct result of her bulimia, which is an ongoing illness, not an attack. And I'm sorry to be insensitive, but bulimia is 100% treatable and is also an illness that people CHOOSE to have, just like morbid obesity is.

You know, a lot of you might find this insensitive, but I refuse to pity people who have made their own hell out of life, i.e. alcoholics, drug addicts, and people who end up with eating disorders because they don't have the strength to tell the rest of the world to screw right off with their opinions and expectations.

My pity well is already being drained dry by the REAL sad stories, like children in Iraq who have had their whole families killed or their arms blown off. I feel that a lot of people in America have become so overly comfortable that they've developed their own little whiny ailments that are nothing more than cries for attention.

As a diagnosed sufferer of so called "depression", all I have to say is: Stop crying, shit or get off the pot, pull yourself together, grow up, manage your own health like an adult, stop soliciting pity, take people's good advice and implement it in your life, stop being tragic, and STFU!!

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I'm just really sick and tired of American pity culture.

3.) Again, according to the program I'm watching, the husband received sums of money that he was supposed to use on her health expenses. He instead used these funds to pay for lawyers to argue to get the plug pulled on her. Furthermore, the husband refused to allow doctors to treat infections that she developed. This hindered her recovery, though I admitt I have no knowledge of the state of her cerebral cortex.

show us evidence

6.) This may or may not be in agreement to your statement, but the doctor who was on the program I was watching reported that she was able to follow commands, and such. He reported that she is better off than patients with cerebral pulsey. It should be noted that we do not kill off patients with cerebral pulsey.

i highly doubt that the doctor is/was in a position to determine that.

i'm willing to bet that he has only seen the video made by the parents.

Some other issues: A Rabbi on said program pointed out the following things. If someone tries to commit suicide, do we not try to stop them? Does anyone remember the so called "Dr. Death?" (I don't remember his real name). He was the guy who performed a number of mercy killings, and is now serving a sentence in prision. Also, the florida state judge was also criticized. He apparently has bad sight. So, instead of viewing the videos of the women for himself, he let his staff member view it, and tell him what they thought. I believe that when someone's life is on the line, the person who makes the descison must see and hear the full facts for themselves.

Dr. Kevorkian, i believe. he performed assisted suicides, until he was silly enough to air one on national television.

but then again, why not let people end it all?

don't you dare say that you have a better idea of the state of their life than they do. if they truly feel that their time is up, the most we can do is ensure that it is painless and quick

Does anyone remember the so called "Dr. Death?" (I don't remember his real name).
Jack Kevorkian. Made quite a reputation for himself, didn't he...

http://www.kevork.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kevorkian
http://www.freep.com/suicide/

An excellent analysis. I suspect that one reason so many seem to be so agitated about this case is that, somewhere in the back of their minds they see themselves in one of the three roles: victim, persecutor, or defender. It's like a classic "triad."

If I were Ms. Shiavo's father, I would probably do the same thing he's doing ... try to keep my daughter alive as long as I could. I would probbly want to kill that SOB she's married to; he waits until she's been in a coma for seven months then says, "Oh, by the way, Terri said she doesn't ever want to be kept alive in this state." Was that before or after he started shacking up with his latest slut?
An interesting first paragraph. The second less so but we must allow for emotional expression, eh?

In the place of the victim, if my mind is gone then that which is me is gone. Let it go and let go. The me you know & value is gone.

In the place of the parents. It would take awhile but at some point I would face the fact that my baby is gone. I would probably die opf grief but it would be an inescapable fact unless I retreated into delusion.

I've been in the husbands place. I let go. I had a breakdown afterwards and will never be the same again. Sorry Whispering Legs, not all men are heartless bastards. You have no idea at what cost such a decision is made.

I support euthanaisa. There is no point in keeping her alive, she's a vegetable, she can't recover, all she does is consume ressources. I say we just kill her, fuck letting her die slowly, just poison her or something. That way we can pacify both sides, the tube is back in and she still dies. Except this time it's fast.

So the government had to pass a law so that the medical system would support her? I say the real tragedy is the state of the US health system.

Actually, according to the program I'm watching at the moment (Scarborough Country), some of what you have posted is false.

1.) From what one doctor said, there is no evidence that she had a heartattack. When one has a heartattack, the heart releases something into the blood stream ( I don't recall the name). There was no trace of this in her blood stream.

3.) Again, according to the program I'm watching, the husband received sums of money that he was supposed to use on her health expenses. He instead used these funds to pay for lawyers to argue to get the plug pulled on her. Furthermore, the husband refused to allow doctors to treat infections that she developed. This hindered her recovery, though I admitt I have no knowledge of the state of her cerebral cortex.

6.) This may or may not be in agreement to your statement, but the doctor who was on the program I was watching reported that she was able to follow commands, and such. He reported that she is better off than patients with cerebral pulsey. It should be noted that we do not kill off patients with cerebral pulsey.

Some other issues: A Rabbi on said program pointed out the following things. If someone tries to commit suicide, do we not try to stop them? Does anyone remember the so called "Dr. Death?" (I don't remember his real name). He was the guy who performed a number of mercy killings, and is now serving a sentence in prision. Also, the florida state judge was also criticized. He apparently has bad sight. So, instead of viewing the videos of the women for himself, he let his staff member view it, and tell him what they thought. I believe that when someone's life is on the line, the person who makes the descison must see and hear the full facts for themselves.

Can we get the name of the doctor so we can see if it's one of the court appointed doctors who has been examining Terri for years or one of the numerous doctors the family has hired to spread their own story after spending a total of five minutes with her?

Quote:
"In instances like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favour of life" George W Bush

That's hilarious. Didn't he sign a law while governor of Texas that allowed doctors to take a preemie off life support over objections of the parents?

Actually, according to the program I'm watching at the moment (Scarborough Country), some of what you have posted is false.

Scarborough Country is a great program!

1.) From what one doctor said, there is no evidence that she had a heartattack. When one has a heartattack, the heart releases something into the blood stream ( I don't recall the name). There was no trace of this in her blood stream.

You are correct. Also, on another program I watched, there was a scan done 53 weeks (I could be wrong on the timing) that should Bone fractures and no one has picked this up. Injuries to the spines, arms, legs, and no one can explain how this happened.

3.) Again, according to the program I'm watching, the husband received sums of money that he was supposed to use on her health expenses. He instead used these funds to pay for lawyers to argue to get the plug pulled on her. Furthermore, the husband refused to allow doctors to treat infections that she developed. This hindered her recovery, though I admitt I have no knowledge of the state of her cerebral cortex.

Yep. And according to the same program that I've mentioned above, the husband was receptive to therapy till he received the money from his suit, then and only then did he refuse further treatment for her. Also, a doctor that was with Schiavo for 10 hours examining her said that she can be rehabilited to a point and he's being ignored.

6.) This may or may not be in agreement to your statement, but the doctor who was on the program I was watching reported that she was able to follow commands, and such. He reported that she is better off than patients with cerebral pulsey. It should be noted that we do not kill off patients with cerebral pulsey.

I saw that report too. I've been trying to find it but I bet you it is lost in the realms of cyberspace or is on a pro-schiavo website so that it'll get ignored here.

Some other issues: A Rabbi on said program pointed out the following things. If someone tries to commit suicide, do we not try to stop them? Does anyone remember the so called "Dr. Death?" (I don't remember his real name). He was the guy who performed a number of mercy killings, and is now serving a sentence in prision.

Kevorkian

Also, the florida state judge was also criticized. He apparently has bad sight. So, instead of viewing the videos of the women for himself, he let his staff member view it, and tell him what they thought. I believe that when someone's life is on the line, the person who makes the descison must see and hear the full facts for themselves.

Here I will agree with you whole heartedly.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7254897/?GT1=6305

The gist: The PRESIDENT has signed a FEDERAL ORDER, nay, a LAW, a fucking LAW, to keep this woman's feeding tube in because her parents can't get the fuck over the facts that they are no longer her legal guardians and she is brain dead.


My favourite quote from one of the dipshits:

Wouldn't whatever amount God gives her require the feeding tube to be removed? I don't think God has any say in the matter when she is being artificially kept alive

agreed. what gives the president the right to decide whether or not she stays alive? THAT is being presumptuous.

heard some people talking about this on the radio the other night, and they said some pretty interesting stuff.
first off- we, as a species, are fully aware that we are going to die. that is the biggest joke you could play on any creature. second, we are total pussies about handling death. at the risk of sounding cliched, death is a part of life. death can be a perfectly normal, dignified act. but we choose to fear it, and prolong it as long as possible. this person has been completely stripped of their dignity. brain-dead and living off a feeding tube? christ, i hope that never happens to me. sure, some people might reach an age well into the 80s or 90s, but most people cease to really 'live' after a point long preceding that age.

last weekend i was volunteering at an assissted living center and i got to make a little trip to the forbidden fourth floor; the home of the alzheimers' patients. most of these people appeared to be unaware of what was going on, and several were sitting in their own filth. that's not living, and i hope my next of kin would have the goddamn common courtesy to let me pass with my dignity before i ever reached that point in 'life.'

as far as the whole 'playing god' thing, the only people who are 'playing god' are the ones who insist on prolonging this person's tragic existence. i agree with one of the first posters who said that god a.) doesnt exist or b.) doesn't give a shit.

in a nutshell, if there is any reasonable hope for this woman coming back to full consciousness or whatever, then snap to it. otherwise, let her die with what little dignity she has left, and try to treat death and those close to it with a little respect.

Wow.

This is indeed a sad situation. It appears this woman has become a pawn in the fight for the right to life movement.

I listened to an interview with her one time Guardian ad litem Jay Wolfson.

He seemed honorable as he avoided passing judgement and only explained what he did and observed.

* He said she is indeed in a persistent vegitative state as she showed all clasic symptoms. He said he would talk to her and sometimes she would turn and other times she did not. He would call to her from the doorway and she would not turn. She would make a noise and then turn.

He said the video was disturbing but from what he witnessed and from talking to the people that guarded her and helped her, he felt she was in a persistent vegitative state.

* He spoke of the extreame measures that the family would take to keep her alive. He said in one setting the husbands lawyer went after the parents with scenerios and what they would do. The lawyer said what if she got diabetes and require a limb removed? The father said he would do it. The lawyer went on to the other four limbs and the father said he would have them removed. When asked about a heart replacement, Mr. Wolfson said the father went into a rather gruesome description on that. At that point the husband said that is it, there is no way he would divorse her.

However, the next day the parents said they were forced into saying things.

The parents are desperate. Even today somebody told me(have not verified) that the parents want her alive because she will go to purgatory because she isn't cognisant to receive last rites. They are Catholics.

If this man is indeed honorable, then it does sound like she is gone and we have a poor family who in their desperation have become pawns for the right to life movement. Especially with the recent news of a leaked memo that said this case would make the Republican base excited over the debate in the senate.

last weekend i was volunteering at an assissted living center and i got to make a little trip to the forbidden fourth floor; the home of the alzheimers' patients. most of these people appeared to be unaware of what was going on, and several were sitting in their own filth. that's not living, and i hope my next of kin would have the goddamn common courtesy to let me pass with my dignity before i ever reached that point in 'life.'

as far as the whole 'playing god' thing, the only people who are 'playing god' are the ones who insist on prolonging this person's tragic existence. i agree with one of the first posters who said that god a.) doesnt exist or b.) doesn't give a shit.

in a nutshell, if there is any reasonable hope for this woman coming back to full consciousness or whatever, then snap to it. otherwise, let her die with what little dignity she has left, and try to treat death and those close to it with a little respect.

That's admirable that you do that. I respect you for it. I once did a field trip to the local mental facility and to this day I still remember what I saw. What disturbed me the most was a 67 year old man in a diaper laying on a big pillow crying and chattering like a 4 month old. I asked the Doc how helped him with something and he said it was an extreame case of retardation. His brain never developed.

I can't understand why people want people to live like that. Is it selfishness? They can't deal with death? Shame?

Anybody that thinks people should live no matter what should volunteer to help out at such facilities. It's easy to think that way when you don't see it first hand.