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To: eno_
There are questions of quality of life. I went through much the same questions when my father died in 1985. He had terminal leukemia. The question was whether we could continue to give chemotherapy and put him on life support. The doctors told us that his life would be HELL, doing that. The family decided that it was much more humane to let him go. Anyway, his death was inevitable.

In Terri Schiavo's case, her personality is gone. All that is left is an empty automaton. It hardly seems a dignified way to live.
17 posted on 10/25/2003 7:25:59 AM PDT by punster
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To: punster
It is difficult to see a loved one die in pain. I'm sorry you had to go through that. However I'm not sure what your experience has to do with Terri. She is not terminal. She is not in pain. The decision is not about witholding chemotherapy. It's about witholding food and water from a patient who requires care.
30 posted on 10/25/2003 8:14:46 AM PDT by ladyjane
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To: punster
You pontificated, All that is left is an empty automaton. It hardly seems a dignified way to live. Prove it, no, don't asseret that thus and such doctor has said this or that, prove that Terri is not still in her body, prove that being alive and loved is not dignified.

Neal Boortz has shown himself to be a bigger ass than I ever thought was possible. He's as bad as the damn democrats, as imperial in his thinking as Stalin. And he's flat wrong, as a human being.

33 posted on 10/25/2003 8:27:02 AM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: punster
There is a big difference in Terri and your dad. She's not terminal. Her life wouldn't have to be hell. Just because you wouldn't want to live like that, doesn't mean she doesn't appreciate life. She has shown that she has a very strong will to live. People don't just hang onto life when they are ready to die.

"In Terri Schiavo's case, her personality is gone. All that is left is an empty automaton. It hardly seems a dignified way to live. "

And that sounds like it came straight out of the scummy attourney's mouth.
39 posted on 10/25/2003 8:41:48 AM PDT by honeygrl (All of the above is JUST MY OPINION)
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To: punster
In Terri Schiavo's case, her personality is gone. All that is left is an empty automaton. It hardly seems a dignified way to live.

Actually, that may not be the case. Below is a link to an article I posted several days ago. It's a study of brain scans of people in a PVS. Very interesting. Basically, even the "learned" doctors don't really know what's going on in there.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1005899/posts Please click on this link to get to the link to the rest of the article

"Daniel Rios is 24 years old, with wavy black hair, a thick mustache and a glassy stare that seems to look both at you and through you. One day almost four years ago, while he was taking a shower, a blood vessel ruptured in his brain, and he collapsed on the bathroom floor. After emergency surgery, he lay in a coma for three weeks. When he finally opened his eyes, he could not speak or move his body; his head simply lolled. In the months that followed, the doctors monitoring him at the Center for Head Injuries at the J.F.K. Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in Edison, N.J., saw few signs that he had any meaningful mental life. Sometimes he looked as if he were crying. Other times his eyes would follow a mirror passed before his face. On his best days he was able to close his eyes on command. But those days were rare. For the most part he lay unresponsive, adrift in a neurological twilight. "

"One morning just over a year after his accident, Rios was taken to the Sloan Kettering Institute on Manhattan's East Side. There, in a dim room, a group of researchers placed a mask over his eyes, fixed headphones over his ears and guided his head into the bore of an M.R.I. machine. A 40-second loop of a recording made by Rios's sister Maria played through the headphones: she told him that she was there with him, that she loved him. As the sound entered his ears, the M.R.I. machine scanned his brain, mapping changes in activity. Several hours afterward, two researchers, Nicholas D. Schiff and Joy Hirsch, took a look at the images from the scan. They hadn't been sure what to expect -- Rios was among the first people in his condition to have his brain activity measured in this way -- but they certainly weren't expecting what they saw. ''We just stared at these images,'' recalls Schiff, an expert in consciousness disorders at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. ''There didn't seem to be anything missing.'' "

"As the tape of his sister's voice played, several distinct clusters of neurons in Rios's brain had fired in a manner virtually identical to that of a healthy subject. Some clusters that became active were those known to help process spoken language, others to recall memories. Was Rios recognizing his sister's voice, remembering her? ''You couldn't tell the difference between these parts of his brain and the brain of one of my graduate students,'' says Hirsch, an expert in brain imaging at Columbia University. Even the visual centers of Rios's brain had come alive, despite the fact that his eyes were covered. It was as if his sister's words awakened his mind's eye."

49 posted on 10/25/2003 9:50:03 AM PDT by KosmicKitty (There are no atheists in the foxholes!!)
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To: punster
In Terri Schiavo's case, her personality is gone. All that is left is an empty automaton. It hardly seems a dignified way to live.

That is from YOUR perspective based upon how YOU would chose to live given YOUR circumstances and conditioning. You have NO perspective of what is going on in her mind and spirit. She could be experiencing pure JOY, perhaps closer to God that anyone else could ever be. You simply have no way of knowing that. So you would have no doubt about killing her?

65 posted on 10/25/2003 11:37:15 AM PDT by Mad_Tom_Rackham ("...the right of THE PEOPLE to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.")
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To: punster
"In Terri Schiavo's case, her personality is gone. All that is left is an empty automaton. It hardly seems a dignified way to live."

So if Michael decides to go in her room and smother her to death tonight, should he be charged with murder?

93 posted on 10/25/2003 3:20:27 PM PDT by sweetliberty ("Having the right to do a thing is not at all the same thing as being right in doing it.")
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