As I understand it, the statements made in this thread reflect the ideology of the majority of Americans. I'm not sure how the minority has so dominated this issue on Free Republic, and how its members manage to shout down everyone else. And I guess I haven't been here for enough years to know if this has ever happened before with any other issues. But it does seem to be very unusual.
I heard a doctor on Bill Bennett's radio show a couple of days ago talking about feeding tubes and last-stage Alzheimer's patients. They get to the point where they can't really feed themselves, and it's too hard for other people to feed them (for what reason I didn't catch), so sometimes they put in a feeding tube. The patient is deep in dementia, so many times he will pull out the tube, which causes medical problems. To prevent them from doing that, the staff straps the patient down in bed. Well this is agony for them in their last days of life, to have to angrily fight against the restraints while being kept alive through the tube. I think it was the same caller who made the statement "I would never put an Alzheimer's patient on a feeding tube." You can read more about it by searching for alzheimer's "feeding tube" on Google. I'm concerned here that many people will believe the hype from the Schiavo case and get the idea that a feeding tube is always necessary, thereby condemning patients to weeks of additional agony.
The bottom line as I see it in this case that if Terri had had a living will she would have been dead long ago and no one outside Florida would have heard about the case. Since there was no living will, it fell to the next of kin (Michael) to communicate Terri's wishes to the doctors. Because the Schindlers resisted, Michael turned the case over to the court for a decision. After expert testimony, the court confirmed that Terri would not have wanted to live as a vegetable, and ordered the feeding tube to be removed. And at the time when the first appeal was filed in the case, an insidious type of creeping insanity began to manifest itself. The symptoms include proud and willful disregard of the facts in the case, the use of Nazi symbolism to represent everyone who fails to "rescue" the patient from her stated end of life wishes, and repeated misrepresentation of the situation as "right to life" versus "culture of death" (instead of "right of privacy").
So how's that? Do I qualify for WPPFF membership?
We must have HUNDREDS on that list now.
Succintly, put and on target, I'd say you do, but I'm not on the membership committee. To hell with the membership committee, welcome. LOL
It's not unusual, although it's reached newly extreme and idiotic heights over the Schiavo case. Other issues which can and have brought out the worst in people on FR include illegal immigration, anything to do with Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Elian Gonzalez case, and the California recall, to name a few.