Free Republic

For Terri Schiavo, it's all over but the starving. However, the repercussions of pulling Terri's feeding tube are just beginning. National Review Online's Andy McCarthy has explained that the abuse of Terri Schiavo's rights would scandalize the nation were the same things done to murderers or terrorists. Actually, it's worse than that. Not only do we treat our murderers with more care than we treat incapacitated patients like Terri Schiavo -- we dispose of our property with more care than we are disposing of her life. Imagine a different set of facts in the Schiavo case. Let's say a woman...

A patient's inability to pay for medical care combined with a prognosis that renders further care futile are two reasons a hospital might suggest cutting off life support, the chief medical officer at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital said Monday. Dr. David Pate's comments came as the family of Spiro Nikolouzos fights to keep St. Luke's from turning off the ventilator and artificial feedings keeping the 68-year-old grandfather alive. St. Luke's notified Jannette Nikolouzos in a March 1 letter that it would withdraw life-sustaining care of her husband of 34 years in 10 days, which would be Friday. Mario Caballero, the...

By J.R. By now anyone who watches the news on the television, listens to news on the radio, or reads a newspaper has heard of the Terri Schiavo case. Terri Schiavo, a woman, who at age 26, collapsed and suffered brain damage under ambiguous circumstances, is said to be in a constant vegetative state according to her husband, Michael Schiavo. Mr. Schiavo wants to have her feeding tube removed so that she will die and says that's what Terri would have wanted. The Schindlers, Terri's parents, have been fighting a 10 year legal battle with Mr. Schiavo, their son-in-law, in...

HOUSTON -- A Houston judge has ruled that Texas Children's Hospital can't remove a baby from life support even though doctors say he is suffering a slow death... The baby's mother said she was pleased by the decision. "I choose life and I love my son," said Wanda Hudson. "When I see him he looks like a normal child so he just needs to finish growing and developing. He has his arms, his legs, his eyes, ears, nose, everything." "There is a chance the baby will survive," said Mario Cabellero, Hudson's attorney. "And as long as there's a chance, the...

TAMPA -- Terri Schiavo should undergo a new examination by independent medical experts to put to rest lingering questions on whether she has any hope of recovery, the University of South Florida professor who had been her court-appointed advocate said Tuesday. But before any tests are done, her warring husband and parents would have to agree to drop their legal fight in favor of whichever side the medical evidence supports, Jay Wolfson said in his first interview on the case since serving as Terri Schiavo's guardian ad litem. His comments come as the legal options of Terri Schiavo's parents have...

Removing Life Support Ruled Out for Arafat 2 hours, 28 minutes ago Middle East - AP By LARA SUKHTIAN, Associated Press Writer CLAMART, France - Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) has suffered brain damage and kidney and liver failure, the Palestinian prime minister said Wednesday, but a top Muslim cleric ruled out any possibility of life support being turned off. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: Yasser Arafat Palestinian Official Comments on Arafat Health (AP Video) French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said late Wednesday that the Palestinian leader was in his "final hours," telling France-2 television: "I hope that we can...

(Note: I just heard at the 10 a.m. PST KFI News AM 640 broadcast that Palestinian officials say that Yassir Arafat 'will die tonight'.) Palestinian officials said life sustaining artificial respiratory machines keeping Yasser Arafat alive will be switched off "when the time comes." Various media reports indicate that time could be within hours.

Palestinian officials said life sustaining artificial respiratory machines keeping Yasser Arafat alive will be switched off when the time comes. Amman's daily al-Ghad Tuesday quoted the unidentified officials as saying the decision to remove the respirator will be taken by members of a high-ranking official Palestinian team, who arrived in Paris Monday. "There is no more hope that he will ever return to life," the sources said of Arafat who has been in coma for four days. Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, Mahmoud Abbas, secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Palestinian Legislative Council...

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has been given the nod to lead a robotic lunar mission in 2008 -- a key step in President George W. Bush’s recently announced space vision strategy. The lunar reconnaissance orbiter would likely be geared to investigate the potential for water ice trapped at the Moon’s poles. This type of investigation may involve powerful radar to scan the always darkened craters, thought by some scientists to contain bountiful quantities of water ice. Water ice is believed to have been brought to the Moon by impacting comets. Both NASA’s Lunar Prospector and the...

PORTLAND, Ore. – A Multnomah County judge has rejected a request that doctors restart life support for Douglas Schmidt, who slipped into a coma in March when his state-paid anti-seizure medication ran out. As Schmidt hovered near death Monday, his sister broke ranks with other family members and sought a court order to reconnect a ventilator that had been switched off Sunday. Circuit Judge Katherine Tennyson rejected the request for a restraining order. "I see no reason to change the decision that has been made," she said. Late Monday evening, Schmidt continued to breathe on his own, though his condition...

Has Dr. Howard Dean forgotten the Hippocratic oath he took? If he had his way, Terri Schiavo would suffer an agonizing death by starvation. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature should be "embarrassed" for passing a law to prevent the brain-damaged woman from being slowly put to death according to her husband's desire, said the Democrat front-runner, who professed to be "appalled." "I'm tired of people in the Legislature thinking that they have an M.D. when what they really have is a B.S.," he said this week in Tallahassee. As usual, self-described feminist groups were silent about yet another...

Focus on the Family's founder and chairman talks at length about the Terri Schiavo case — and the extraordinary efforts of Americans to help save her life. It was a momentous day in Florida yesterday, when the Sunshine State's Legislature passed "Terri's Bill — legislation giving Gov. Jeb Bush the authority to rescue Terri Schiavo from the court-ordered dehydration she's been suffering through since last week. As of this moment, Schiavo is receiving the nourishment she needs to live. Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, told a national listening audience on his daily "Focus on...

A study finds a "patient-centered" movement is taking hold in intensive care units. Age and the extent of organ damage used to be the two most important criteria in determining who in an intensive care unit would be kept on life support and who would not. But a new Canadian study says decisions to take critically ill patients off life support now have less to do with these conventional measures and more often reflect a doctor's subjective opinion about the patient's chances of surviving. That, in turn, suggests a doctor's views and personal biases about the quality of life often...

NEW YORK (AP) - Oxygen Media said Tuesday it is laying off nearly two-thirds of the staff at its oxygen.com Web site and is scaling back the site's content because of difficult business conditions. Twenty-nine people, out of a total of 44 at oxygen.com, are expected to lose their jobs over the next three months, bring the site's total staff to 15, said spokeswoman Kassie Canter. The focus of oxygen.com will also shift to promoting the Oxygen cable network, rather than original content. Chat rooms, for example, are being phased out. "The online side is simply not structured in a...