Posted on 05/24/2006 9:08:58 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Michael Schiavo has published a book titled "Terri: The Truth." It is about his well-known and, unfortunately, successful fight to end his wifes life. Opening this book is like falling down Alices rabbit hole and ending up in a new and bizarre world.
You dont even have to turn to the first pagejust look at the front cover, where Michael proclaims, My two babies were threatened with death. I was condemned by the president, the majority leaders of the House and Senate, the governor of Florida, the pope, and the right-wing media. . . . I didnt respond to their attacks. I didnt confront their lies. Until now.
Well, a quick Internet search turns up page after page of Michaels vigorous responses on Nightline, Larry King Live, and other venues, most of it very confrontational.
Why would he respond now? Books sales and talk shows are a lucrative business.
This turns out to be typical of the way things work in Michael Schiavos world. As readers of the book soon discover, Schiavos opponents deserve all the venom he can spew on them. To Michael Schiavos mind, nobody could possibly have a good reason for wanting to let Terri Schiavo live in her condition. So he paints his opponents as biased, liars, downright insane. Just as the book cover indicates, the pope, the president, the governor of Florida, Terris family, and several cranks who sent Michael death threatswhich, by the way, I know from experience happens in these kinds of casesare all lumped into the same category: people who opposed Michaels noble crusade to kill his wife. Noble? Or was he after collecting the insurance money and marrying the woman he was living with? Michael Schiavos world, if you believe his book, is like the old Westerns where the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys all wore black hats and twisted their mustaches a lot.
Joking aside, Michael Schiavos world is a dangerous and scary place, a place where the survival of the fittest is taken to a whole new levela place where a badly brain-damaged woman should have her food and water taken away simply because she is badly brain damaged and her husband says she would not want to live that way. Its a place where its easy for even a registered nurse like Michael Schiavo to confuse food, which everyone needs, with the kind of life support, like a respirator, which his wife did not need. Its a place where, as Schiavo is accustomed to saying with a straight face, taking someones food away is not starving her to death; its simply allowing her to die peacefully and painlessly. (Why a hospice needs to administer morphine to a person dying painlessly is something that Schiavo does not bother to explain, like so many other issues.)
The scariest thing about Michael Schiavos world is that he, and so many of his partisans in the media and the public, do not want to give the benefit of the doubt to a comatose person. Now, I admit that many people today think well of Michael and less of those of us who defended Terri Schiavo since the autopsy showed that she had been brain-dead when she was in a comatose state. But thats beside the point. Our concern was with safeguarding the process and giving her the benefit of the doubt. After all, you cant do an autopsy until the person is dead, and then it is too late to correct mistakes.
Reading Schiavos book is a sobering reminder that we must never give up our fight to guard the rights of the weak and the voiceless, or one day we will all be livingand dyingin Michael Schiavos world.
This is part six in the War on the Weak series.
Of course, if she accepted it I guess that would be pretty strong evidence that she wanted to live.
It's all Newspeak.
Please elaborate. Why would we lose seats or the White house because of this?
"If we are going to allow courts to give decade-old half-remembered conversations the same force as a written living will, we are all in very, very big trouble."
Absolutely, and I think we're allready are in very big trouble.
"What upset me most was that her parents were prohibited from giving her water by hand.
Of course, if she accepted it I guess that would be pretty strong evidence that she wanted to live."
Terri was able to maintain her own saliva through swallowing.
At least 3 former staff members signed sworn affidavits stating they had either given her spoonfuls of jello, or placed wet cloths in her mouth for her to suck on.
One guardian ad litum requested a swallowing test which was ignored by Judge Greer.
"Without A Trace" has portrayed pro-lifers as the kind of people who would see a clinic bomber as heroic. These people just don't get it.
I would point out that Chuck cannot address the following because of Michael's panting attorney entourage There exist video of Terri prior to the lawsuit settlement which show her responding to directions of where to look and to people speaking to her; at some point after the courts awarded Michael monies, Terri 'became brain dead' and not in the natural progression of her malady. I'm of the school who believe someone with intimate access to Terri 'hurried along her decline via artificial means such as injected insulin, etc.
Definitely a sociopath.
"I'm of the school who believe someone with intimate access to Terri 'hurried along her decline via artificial means such as injected insulin, etc."
It doesn't require such drastic measures.
Treatment for brain damage requires therapy and stimulation.
All one has to do is deny regular therapy, draw the curtains, turn down the lights, turn off the radio and TV, restrict visitors, forbid trips outside, forbid movement to a chair, deny dental care and other basic hygeine.
That oughta do it.
Michael was enjoying the comfort of other women even before he began his euthenasia campaign. One woman was even with the blessing of Terri's parents.
My point is that one doesn't need to actively injure someone to contribute to their deterioration.
One can simply deny basic treatment and stimulation so that neglect and isolation can do the work.
And can't you see how regarding decades-old half-remembered conversations as a living will could be used to override spousal decisions? If this case had been Terri's brother v. her parents, would she still be dead? You betcha.
No offense, but in seeing the pro-Terri faction as anti-spousal control, you are buying into a straw man argument that the pro-euthanasia forces have been happy to provide. The pro-lifers who sided with the Schindlers in this case did not object to spouses controlling medical decisions. They objected to the following:
1. Any guardian being given the right to starve a person to death.
2. Any court regarding food and water as a heroic medical measure.
3. A clearly unfit guardian (Michael Schiavo) being left in charge of a patient.
I want my wife in charge of my medical care, but you can bet I don't want her or anybody else saying, "We should starve him to death, he told me in 1986 that he didn't want a bunch of tubes in him."
"want my wife in charge of my medical care, but you can bet I don't want her or anybody else saying, "We should starve him to death, he told me in 1986 that he didn't want a bunch of tubes in him.""
Excellent point.
The vague "statement" he strangely remembered after he won the malpractice suit did not even address the situation she wound up in.
Supposedly she and Michael had been visiting a dying relative. This person was terminal, Terri was not terminal. He didn't make any claim she wanted to be dehydrated to death.
You are correct that neglect can cause the brain to deteriorate ... it's been proven in newborns, sadly. My point is that such neglect wouldn't 'eliminate the albatross quickly enough'.
Certainly a big part of the problem!
well...it cannot be proven there were attempts to actively injure Terri through such things as injections of insulin.
I'm not saying it isn't possible...it just cannot be proven.
The issues of neglect and isolation can easily be proven.
On top of that, several times Terri's body was forced to fight off infections without the aid of antibiotics (at Michael's orders) So this also greatly contributed to her deterioration.
Law and Order is another manifestation of the corrosion of godliness. The Scientologists who engineered Terry's death are another manifestation of truly insane psychopaths worming their insidious malice into the culture. The only way to overcome the evil that seeks to engulf us is to completely destroy liberalism in all of its manifestations.
Anytime you give politicians power in a medical issue of who lives and who dies, eventually you get doctors into the decision making process, other than just opinions. Then you get legislation.
Bad as MS is alleged to be, and I can agree with the presumptions, not the moral judgments, if he is used to move a personal decision on the matter of life and death to the political area, thereby destroying the custom, you open the door for euthanasia.
I don't agree with the starving remedy, either; she should have received a quick death.
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