Posted on 02/17/2005 5:54:30 PM PST by amdgmary
On February 14, 2005, disability advocates with Not Dead Yet issued a call for moratorium on the withholding of assisted sustenance and hydration from people diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative or minimally conscious state.
Citing study findings published in a recent edition of Neurology Magazine, Not Dead Yet’s Stephen Drake stated: "Given the current research regarding brain activity and misdiagnosis, it's a virtual certainty that countless people have been helpless to prevent their own deaths through starvation and dehydration."
The study Drake refers to was reported in the February 8, 2005 edition of the New York Times. The Times noted that: “Thousands of brain-damaged people who are treated as if they are almost completely unaware may in fact hear and register what is going on around them but be unable to respond, a new brain-imaging study suggests.”
The research was conducted with significantly brain-injured (or “minimally conscious”) patients by a team of neuroscientists from New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC. With the use of imaging technology and audio tapes of the patients’ loved ones, scientists were able to record brain activity similar to that of otherwise healthy patients. They reported that the specificity and intricacy of the brain patterns eliminated the possibility of coincidence.
For rather obvious reasons, this has sparked much attention from disability advocates from across the nation.
Indeed, Not Dead Yet has directly called for the same types of testing to be made available to those patients in danger of having assisted nourishment and hydration removed – causing death over the course of many days. In their February press release, they state: “State-of-the-art testing for cognitive activity should be a minimum standard to be applied when someone's death is proposed.”
While all of this may sound reasonable enough to most people, there is a group that would prefer you think it rubbish. They don black robes and, with gavels swinging, have the power to exact a forced death upon the weakest members of our society.
Judges in Florida, specifically Pinellas-Pasco’s Sixth Judicial Circuit, have granted the husband of Terri Schiavo the authority to remove her tube-provided food and fluids in order to terminate her life. The process could take as long as 20 days and will subject the disabled woman (whose true condition is the subject of great dispute) to a ghastly demise. Ms. Schiavo’s husband asserts she is in a persistent vegetative state and would have refused artificial life support based on casual statements he claims she made some 20 years ago.
Disability advocates have long supported Ms. Schiavo’s retained right to receive ordinary care and have argued that labeling a simple gastronomy tube “artificial life support” would immediately and dramatically endanger entire groups of people within the disabled community.
They’re right, of course. But is anyone listening?
Time and again, the parents of Terri Schiavo (Bob and Mary Schindler) have petitioned the courts for the authority to provide her with rehabilitation and therapy. Such measures have been denied for years by Terri’s husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo.
Time and again, the court has refused, steadfast in its opinion that Terri Schiavo exists in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of regaining consciousness or meaningful behavior.
Terri’s parents have given the court evidence in the form of testimony and sworn statements from a number of credible doctors that persistent vegetative state is not a correct diagnosis of their daughter’s condition. At every turn, the court has denied taking such things into consideration. Instead, it relied on the testimony of doctors, who don’t even treat cognitively disabled patients, that Terri just isn’t “in there”.
The court also reviewed videos of Terri, appearing to react quite purposefully to her family and responding to directives, as inconsistent and irreproducible. The doctors who testified on behalf of Terri’s family explained to the court how such behaviors are not consistent with medical and statutory definitions of persistent vegetative state. Sadly, the court chose not to listen.
The consistent failure of the court to remind itself that it is not a body of healthcare practitioners, but a finder of fact, has all but sentenced Terri Schiavo to death. With her, countless others are at immediate risk.
Also in February of 2005, a woman by the name of Sarah Scantlin immerged from a “minimally conscious state” and began speaking with loved ones and caregivers. Though her story is unusual and somewhat bewildering to physicians and laypeople alike, it is not altogether unheard of. Over the years, many individuals thought to be in a coma or a “coma-like” condition have emerged and regained some – if not all - of their abilities. Kate Adamson, Patricia Whitebull and Terry Wallis are only a few of the names we now associate with such medical mysteries. All were diagnosed as comatose or vegetative and all shocked those around them by becoming one with their lives, minds and bodies again.
It is not unreasonable to assume that for each Kate Adamson, Patricia Whitebull or Terry Wallis, there are hosts of other patients in similar states – locked into a bodies that won’t allow them to communicate effectively. Of these incapacitated but aware people, there are many who are in danger of having their lives terminated by a willful act of deprivation.
According to a British medical journal, persistent vegetative state is misdiagnosed nearly 43% of the time. Are we so studiously attempting to enforce someone’s “right to die” that we are neglecting to first ensure that they are still very much among the living?
Imagine being unable to protect yourself and facing a death by the slow and agonizing process of dehydration and starvation. Do we honestly believe that doing such things to others is a humane and compassionate course of action?
With the ongoing progress of image testing and diagnosis procedures for brain-injured patients, there will surely come a day of reckoning when all of us will have to live with the knowledge that living, knowing and feeling human beings were put to their death in the name of some perceived personal dignity. That burden will come to bear most significantly on Florida’s courts and lawmakers as well as those of who accepted the notion that cognitively disabled people are no longer worthy of protection. However, if we sit idly by, we’ll all be just as guilty in the process.
When will WE wake up?
Not according to June:
Jim Robinson revoked my posting privileges on Terris FReepers for some unstated reason and pulled all the previous articles of The Empire Journal pertaining to Terri.. If that's the excuse he's using, it's a pretty lame one. You may tell him that as long as I give permission that there is no danger of any copyright infringement. The problem originated when the poster FR_Addict stated they were going to post our articles whether we gave permission or not. The bottom line in this is Terri and if he wants to be that small, then he'll be the one with blood on his hands . The admin moderator had told me that we couldn't post anymore as news because we were a blog. That is simply untrue, we are a newspaper. They retracted that and Terris FReepers asked me to come back. I agreed after a day, d posted a new article and went over into Word to work on a new article. When I went to post it on FReepers, I found out I had been banned and all the previous stories taken down without explanation. I have been told that some have asked Robinson to allow The Empire Journal and Scoop 1 to post there again but guess he's decided censorship is more important than Terri's life. The Empire Journal has been number one all day on Google on the Terri Schiavo story, in fact, three or four of our articles are in the number 1 spot along with our graphics and for a while today, when you searched for Florida in Google News, we were Number 1 there too. We're working for Terri and from what we've been told----the articles are making a difference.
ASKDOJ@usdoj.gov. Email the US Dept. of Justice and PLEASE SEND THEM TO www.theempirejournal.com. It may save Terri's life.
Just the way I saw it is all.
there would be more outrage
No, remember Robert J. Dole was going around looking for "outrage" in 1996 and found none. It's like the Greek Diogenes going around with a lamp in daylight looking for an honest man, I am afraid, with poor Terri.
Yes, she can likely eat soft food by mouth, but she won't be given the chance thanks to the "people's judge," George W. Greer. The use of the word "people's" in this sense reminds one of the old Communist Chinese and Soviets reborn as it is on the FL Peninsula.
Thanks for the ping!
What are the restrictions for that video? Have the courts said that it cannot be shown?
Please check post #35 on this thread.
The court has threatened any agency showing the video with a lawsuit. I really don't think they can do much about private webcasts, though. Even if one site is taken down, someone else can host it elsewhere.
Wasn't there a book titled, "The Death of Outrage"? I never read it, but I think it was published in the early 90's.
Goodnight Terri prayer!
This is a truly brilliant writing. You have done a tremendous service to humanity here.
And I thought I had seen all of the evil I could stand so far. If this is not the most credible evidence of how much they are hiding, I don't know what is.
People who believe they have the truth do not use threats to keep it in the darkness.
I am asking my fellow Orthodox to include Terri in your prayers especially in the next few days. It looks very much as if they will try for Tuesday to begin killing her. She will be far from the first of course, but it is way past time to stop this casual approach to killing of the disabled; based on a mythical right to die invented by the Supreme Court, and hearsay testimony from people who barely knew the disabled and thought they heard the person say something ten or twenty years ago that might apply.
Can we get a prayer ping here for Terri and for life?
It doesn't work for me. Any ideas?
My prayers go up daily for Terri and her family. God's protection over her. Lord, please protect Terri from a corrupt justice system, and from her HINO Michael. Surround her with your angels. Provide this family with comfort and peace. Take away their fear. Surround them with your love. In Jesus' precious name. Amen
MarMema - thank you for the ping.
Blessings,
trussell
If you want on/off my prayer ping list, please let me know. All requests happily honored.
If each one of us tell our clergyman to pray for Terri during the weekly/daily services, one of us alone, could add hundreds or thousands of voices praying to God for Terri.
Also, MarMema, try this link; hopefull this will work for you.
http://www.cnsnews.com/pdf/2003/bushnell.pdf
I'll remember the Servant of God this morning at Liturgy.
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