Isn't the article saying it is painless, because she is not feeling anything...as opposed to those in Africa, that are concious and cognitive of starving, and it is known that they feel pain?
"1. Depriving food and water from profoundly cognitively disabled persons like Terri who are not otherwise dying, a process that causes death by dehydration over a period of 10-14 days. As I will illustrate below, this may cause great suffering. "
stuartcr asks: "Isn't the article saying it is painless, because she is not feeling anything...as opposed to those in Africa, that are conscious and cognitive of starving...?"
The articles is NOT saying that. There is a part of the article where Michael Schiavo and his attorney, George Felos, are saying that. But, neurologist William Burke is saying a cognitively disabled person "would feel it just as you or I would. They will go into seizures. Their skin cracks, their tongue cracks...(possibly) nosebleeds...heaving and vomiting...It is an extremely agonizing death." And, neurologist Ronald Cranford says they lose "a lot of fluids in the body...blood pressure starts to go down...heart rate goes up...respiration may increase...the hands and the feet become extremely cold...mottled...mouth dries...eyes dry...blood is now so low in the system it's shunted to the heart and other visceral organs...".
Kate Adamson, who was acutally subjected to eight days of dehydration/starvation because it was mistakenly believed that she was in a persistent vegetative state, describes it as "sheer torture" and "far worse" than having abdominal surgery without adequate anesthesia, to which she was also subjected. (You might want to read her description in full.)
The author's conclusion is: "The time has come to face the gut wrenching possibility that conscious cognitively disabled people (like Terri Schiavo) whose feeding tubes are removed...may die agonizing deaths."