Mini-Ping to TERRI DAILIES JANUARY 2005. Happy New Year!
Mini-Ping. Happy New Year!
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/politics/06HEAL.html?ex=1104814800&en=a087ed5ed5ca667f&ei=5070
CONGRESS TOLL FREE #1-877-762-8762 or 1-800-648-3516.
CALL IN TOLL FREE. TERRI IS ALERT AND AWARE OF HER SURROUNDINGS. Please help FREE TERRI SCHIAVO, US SENATE & CONGRESS!
NEWSMAX.COM CONTACT FORM... http://newsmax.com/comments.cfm
... Judge Greer ordered Terri dehydrated based on dubious testimony from Michael, his brother, and his brother's wife that Terri told them she did not want to be hooked up to tubes--something he never told the malpractice jury when he sought a financial award. To the contrary, the malpractice jury was told that Terri could expect a normal lifespan.
Whatever Terri said or did not say, she certainly never asked to be denied the very treatment that might allow her to eat without medical assistance. Yet, in the ultimate injustice, Judge Greer refuses to permit Terri to receive rehabilitative therapy that could help her relearn to eat by mouth, even though several doctors and therapists have testified under penalty of perjury that she is a good candidate for tube weaning.
True, experts hired by Michael disagree. But so what? This isn't a case where we have to believe one side's medical experts or the other's. The issue can be decided empirically by providing Terri with six months of therapy to see if she improves. But Judge Greer, in a decision that elevated procedure over justice, won't do that because, he ruled, it would mean retrying the case.
In that unreasonable denial, it looked as if Greer might have crossed a crucial line. St. Petersburg attorney Pat Anderson, who represents Terri's blood family, believed that denying food and water and potentially rehabilitative therapy that could have made the feeding tube unnecessary, reeked of discrimination against the disabled. She filed a civil rights lawsuit seeking a federal injunction against the dehydration.
Adding to the suit's potential legal heft and credibility: Florida governor Jeb Bush dramatically signed on to the federal case, urging the court in an amicus brief to prevent Terri's dehydration until she received treatment to determine whether she could relearn to take food and water by mouth.
But once again, the law turned its back on her. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Lazzara ruled on October 10 that the federal courts had no jurisdiction and dismissed the case.
People are often shocked at how Terri has been treated as somehow less than a fully human person by the legal and medical experts who are determined to see her dead. They shouldn't be.
This case illustrates how utterly vulnerable people with profound cognitive disabilities have become in this country. Not only are many routinely dehydrated to death--both the conscious and unconscious--but often the people making decisions to stop food and water, like Michael, have glaring conflicts of interest.
FLORIDUH VOTER SAYS: COVER-UP. WHO WILL UNCOVER THE COVER-UP & SAVE TERRI?
http://www.theadvocate.com/stories/012305/new_scalia001.shtml
VOICE YOUR OPINION AT BAY NEWS 9: http://www.baynews9.com/Chat.cfm?event=evtListThreadsbyPollId&ThreadTypeId=2&PollId=112