[ChemistCat]

I will fight for anyone's right to have a feeding tube withdrawn *if he or she has a painful, terminal condition* and clearly indicated that desire by living will.

Oh, this is about Terri? None of that applies. No one has the right to end her life without conviction by jury and her express wishes about final care (and her condition was not terminal in any case, until they decided to make it so.)

If she is indeed in a "vegetative condition" then the painful part doesn't even apply.

Goodnight and good find. Even if the word is getting out via the lying sneaking liberals who want active euthanasia legalized, at least people are going to hear about this and maybe some more people will seek out the actual facts.

[concerned about politics]

More pro-death stuff. It's none of their business. If it were them, they'd change their minds in a hurry!

[steplock]

These murdering ghouls would have considered me for "euthanasia" since I was "fed" intraveneously via a port in my chest for a year - not to mention the tracheotomy and breathing tubes - comatose for several weeks...

Did you know that while comatose a person DOES HEAR what is going on? Admitedly, the brain does some wierd interpretations of the external stimuli, and even while the body does not move, the brain sure as hell does!

I had a little "clarifying" to do with a couple of surgeons when I finally recovered enough to talk half way coherently....especially when I described what one did to me while I was on the operating table. He had an "unprofessional" method of removing a bandage.

[xzins]

Pro-euthanasia of elderly alzheimer patients is a huge step from not keeping a feeding tube in a comatose patient.

The issue with Terri Shiavo is not the removal of the tube. It is that no one would attempt to use therapy to teach her to eat on her own.

It is possible that behind the incapacity she has she might be aware of her surroundings. She would not be the first incapacitated patient for whom that is true.

[Nebullis]

If we want our loved ones to live and die in dignity, we ought to think twice before suspending them in the last stage of irreversible dementia.

Back when grandma and the kids had to decide to sell the farm or keep grampa alive, extreme life-suspending efforts after "the appointed time to die" was a rare exception.

[MarMema]

Ronald Cranford is a sick sick man and I can hardly believe you would post something he wrote.

He is not only a liar and a sadist but a killer.

You need to read some of the stuff he has written in medical journals, and the replies.

Anyway since when did you become such a utilitarianist?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I have placed this article not so much as a reflection of the Schiavo case, but more as a conversation piece for the education those who have stated on other threads their desire to have all possible efforts taken in the event something like this happens to them.

[nmh]

"Ronald Cranford, of Bloomington, is a neurologist at Hennepin County Medical Center and a faculty associate at the University of Minnesota's Center for Biomedical Ethics"

This "compassionate" appeal to murder people not up to his royal standards is common amongst our glorious traditional doctors. It all starts in medical school ... conditioning them to see compassion in killing people.

Wouldn't it be ironic if he developed dementia (in and out) and someone told him it was time to go and he couldn't express his desire to live?

[wizardoz]

Comfortable solutions aren't easy to find.

#1. Comfort is not the deciding factor.

#2. As of Roe v Wade, we don't have the right to live. If we don't have the right to live, how can we have the right to die?

#3. I don't care how the bloody Europeans handle it. We've seen them let 14,000 people die from lack of air conditioning. We've seen them help kill 6,000,000 Jews and Catholics. Europeans are bloodthirsty, parochial savages who colonialized the Americas, Africa, and much of the Mid-east. They have all the moral authority of a cannibal with his grandma's leg still hanging out of his mouth.

[TheDon]

Girl emerges from coma during Bryan Adams concert

Last Updated: 2003-03-12 14:00:21 -0400 (Reuters Health)

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters Health) - A young woman left in a coma for six years after she collapsed at school has started to respond to the world around her after her mother took her to see her pop star hero Bryan Adams perform live.

Christiane Kittel, now 24, was left in a vegetative state after her collapse on 12 June 1997. Doctors believe her condition was caused by a combination of hot weather, a hereditary haemophilia condition and side-effects of the contraceptive pill.

She had to be resuscitated three times, once at school and twice at the University Clinic in Regensburg, where she underwent surgery before being attached to life-support machines in the intensive care unit.

Later she was moved to the intensive care unit at the Clinic for Neurologic Rehabilitation in Regensburg, where her parents Karl-Gunther and Adelheide Kittel have kept a 15-hour watch by her bedside every day.

Her father, now 55, told Reuters Health: "We did not want her to be alone so we have spent every day by her bedside. We take it in turns, my wife does six hours than I take over for about six hours, there is usually someone there constantly between 5 AM and 8 PM."

"We have never given up hope of seeing our beloved daughter again," he said.

"Bryan Adams was always her biggest hero and she loved his music before she fell into a coma," said his wife Adelheid, 53. "When we heard about the concert in Regensburg we knew straight away that we had to take her there."

A local paper paid for the tickets and doctors arranged special help to get Christiane to the concert, her mother said.

During the concert, Christiane started to move in the wheelchair and was fascinated by the music and the singer.

"I will never forget it, I could have hugged the whole world. When we got back to the clinic she was still animated, and three times she called my name, she said Mama."

Head of the clinic Dr. Gerhard Weber, who has worked with Christiane for six years, confirmed that the concert had been a big leap forward for the young woman, but warned there was still a long way to go.

"I think there had been signs that she was starting to respond to the treatment she was getting before the concert and was no longer in a full vegetative state, but the concert certainly represented a big improvement," he told Reuters Health.

"There is a long way to go but I am very happy with the results of our experiment. It was the first time she had been out of the hospital apart from a single brief trip to her home. What she needs now is for the various therapies to continue and a lot of emotional stimulation including more trips home, for example.

"It's wrong to say it is a great miracle what happened here," Weber added. "But we have taken small steps and we are on the way to our goal."

But father Karl-Gunther takes another view: "I have no doubt that it was the concert that marked the turning point. She seemed to come alive when she was there, and clearly called out her mother's name. We now believe she is finally coming home to us."

[TheDon]

http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Hadamar/Backgrounds/backgrounds.html

[cartoonistx]

SOYLENT GREEN! WHERE THE HELL IS MY SOYLENT GREEN!

[TheDon]

http://www.cchr.org/religion/page49.htm

[fly_so_free]

"Just as we have tried to come to grips with the appropriate care of PVS patients, we've got to confront the dilema of dealing with the demented"

Oh yes, and something has to be done about the developmentally disabled, the blind, the crippled, vee really muzt do sumzing. Vee muzt find a solution for all zeese. Zey have no purpose, zey serve no funtion, zey are a burden on soziety, and zee State. Zey must be eliminated.......

[I still care]

"In Europe, feeding tubes are rarely seen in nursing homes. Once a patient is so severely brain-damaged that only artificial nutrition can sustain life, many doctors and families rightly ask, "What's the point?"

They also deny dialysis to anyone over 60 who can't pay for it on their own - and there is no choice, as it is socialized medicine.

Europe has not removed itself from Nazi principles as much as it likes to think it has. The Nazis are the parents of modern euthenasia.

[MarMema]

All of this has shaken the public's confidence in the medical profession.

UM. NO. THIS is what tends to shake my confidence in the medical profession.

The above link is to a medical journal abstract from last month, advocating the removal of organs for use from brain damaged children, before they have died.

This is where the likes of Ronald Cranford and his Soros-teat-sucking cronies have gotten us.

[fly_so_free]

"In Europe , feeding tubes are rarely seen in nursing homes"

That's because socialized medicine renders senior citizens who need medical care, "obsolete". They try to get rid of them, as soon as possible. But, "everyone has health care." Health care in Europe means "everyone" can go to the doctor for free. It works great, so long as you never get anything worse than a cold or the flu.

[SerpentDove]

RealPlayer:

VIDEO #1

VIDEO #2

[Dustbunny]

This removal of a feeding tube really bothers me.

We arrest people that starve helpless animals but are condoning starving a helpless human being.

Maybe we need to call in the 'Humane Society'! (sarcasm off)

[SerpentDove]