This has to be one of the most grusome passages I've read in a long time. ABC should be ashamed.
THE FINAL DAYS
Death from dehydration common, placid, doctors say
Removing a feeding tube from a patient who has no hope of recovery is a common practice that leads to a peaceful death, doctors say.
BY JACOB GOLDSTEIN
jgoldstein@herald.com
Unless an order is given to reinsert her feeding tube, Terri Schiavo will soon begin a peaceful decline that will lead to death in about two weeks, experts said Saturday.
She won't be aware of thirst, hunger or suffering, because the parts of her brain that create awareness were destroyed 15 years ago, according to the doctors who have examined her.
Schiavo will die of dehydration -- a common end for patients with no reasonable hope of recovery, and one widely believed to be essentially painless.
Patients who, unlike Schiavo, are conscious to begin with, lose consciousness about a week after the tube is removed. The body's systems fail in the following days, leading to ''a sort of peaceful slipping away,'' said Dr. John Kuluz, a University of Miami expert in pediatric critical care and brain injury.
Removing feeding tubes ''happens all the time,'' said Dr. Douglas Katz, a Boston University neurologist. ``It's a common procedure in people who have hopeless medical conditions, among them people in vegetative states.''
According to doctors, Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state -- a condition of unconsciousness that persists endlessly, even though basic brain functions continue to cycle the body through periods of sleep and waking.
NO 'SENSE' OF PAIN
Vegetative patients can feel pain in a primitive sense -- reflexes might make them flinch when poked, for example. But they are not conscious of feeling pain or discomfort.
''Even though some of the pathways for sensation are intact up to a point, the part of the brain that processes information about sensation and feeling is not working,'' Katz said. ``A person who is unconscious or in a vegetative state cannot have any sense of discomfort or suffering.''
Even for patients who are conscious to begin with, death by dehydration appears peaceful, according to a study published in 2003 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A survey of 107 hospice nurses who cared for terminally ill patients who chose to die by refusing food and water found that ``most deaths . . . were peaceful, with little suffering.''
The study asked nurses to rate the patients' deaths on a zero-to-nine scale, with nine being the best possible death; the median rating was eight.
Christine Exposito, a registered nurse at HospiceCare of Southeast Florida, said in about half of the cases in which one of her terminal patients loses the ability to survive without a feeding tube, the patient's family will allow the patient to die of dehydration.
ORGAN FAILURE
Dehydration is a gradual process. The body loses water through urination, perspiration and breath. After several days, the volume of blood in the body begins to decline because of the lack of water.
The concentration of toxins and carbon dioxide in the blood increases. All of the body's systems gradually become weaker.
After about 10 days, organ systems begin to fail. The kidneys and liver may stop filtering toxins from the blood. The muscles that drive breathing begin to fail.
Barring an intervention, Terri Schiavo will die in about two weeks when her heart, deprived of oxygen, stops beating.
Disgusting.
These ding bats. Do they really think we believe this? Kidney failure is very painful.
This is from a network that has long decried "the Holocaust."
BLANTANT, OUTRAGEOUS LIE!
I guess that's why the people up on that mountain in the Andes started eating each other... because they hated dying so peacefully!
But if it really wasn't Terri Schiavo's wish to die, what the heck difference does it make how peaceful it is?
Bump for humanity
Bump for humanity
(*expletive*!)
Then why aren't animals put down in such a "peaceful" way??
Death by dehydration is peaceful?? Just ask those folks from Auschwitz and other places. Why doesn't ABC stand up and shriek 'Heil Hitler' over the airwaves and fall down before his image?? It would make the same sense . . .
This is why dieting is always so successful -- because of the euphoria everyone feels when he can't satisfy his appetite. This also explains why there is no obesity in America.
< / blistering, molten, contemptuous sarcasm >
Tell the Truth!
by Pete WinnA note to the news media: Stop lying about Terri Schiavo!
I have a message for the media: Stop, already! Just stop it!!Stop saying that Terri Schiavo is "a brain-dead woman being kept alive solely on life support." She is not. She's a disabled Florida woman, who is now being murdered by medical personnel who have removed her feeding tube.
Aaarghh!!! Tell the truth! Stop saying this is about her right to die. Watch closely at the words coming out of this keyboard: T-E-L-L T-H-E T-R-U-T-H.
Terri Schiavo is not at all comatose. She is not at all on life support. She does not have a breathing tube or a respirator. She simply has been receiving her food and water — something everyone in existence needs to survive — through a tube.
What's more, though she is disabled, she probably could eat by herself — it's just too much trouble for hospital personnel to try to feed her by hand.
That's the key element here: Terri is inconvenient. She's especially inconvenient to her husband, Michael, for several reasons — not the least of which is that he's living with another woman and has children by her. Can anyone seriously trust he is operating in her best interest?
Tell the truth. The case of Terri Schiavo doesn't represent the right to die. It represents the right to live.
When murderers are sentenced to death, it comes as a result of a jury or judge passing sentence on a defendant who is sitting before them. One who has had the right to make a defense, to call witnesses and to testify for themselves, if they so choose.
But Terri Schiavo, this woman who has been incapacitated for more than a decade, has never had the right to do any of that. What's more, Judge George W. Greer, the Florida judge who seems bent on ending her life — who has more than once ordered her food and water removed — has never even seen Terri Schiavo in person.
Never seen her in person! It is inconceivable that a judge would pass judgment on a felon without ever having seen the defendant.
But then, that's the point, isn't it? If I am to believe the mainstream media — either this is about Terri's "right to die" or she, in some sense, deserves to die. After all, she's got no "quality of life," right?
Wrong. Terri is not a criminal defendant. She committed no crime. She is innocent. Her sole "crime" — and I say that with all the irony I can muster — is that she is disabled.
If anything, this case is about the rights of the disabled.
Make no mistake, "quality of life" and comfort are not the prime considerations for living, any more than parenting is about spending "quality time" with kids. Forget quality time. If you don't spend "quantity time" with children, that's when they appear to suffer, if we are to believe the research. And if a disabled person is going to be killed because he or she is "inconvenient," let's stop talking about his or her quality of life. The quality of life while being starved and dehydrated to death is nonexistent.
Let's talk about the death process for Terri if her feeding tube is not reinserted. After three or four days, she will have lost weight and will have begun to lose normal body secretions. Her mouth will begin to look dry and her eyes will appear sunken. She will look thinner because her body tissues will have lost fluid. Her heart rate will gradually go up, and her blood pressure will gradually go down.
Five to 10 days from now, her alertness will decrease markedly. Breathing will become irregular with periods of very fast and then very slow breathing.
From day 10 until death — first coma, then kidney function will decline and toxins will begin accumulating in her body. Those toxins will cause her respiratory muscles to fail. Then multiple organ systems will begin to fail from lack of nutrition.
Then, and only then, she will die.
Sure. You're right, mainstream media. That's exactly what Terri has a "right" to. That's exactly what she would have wanted.
Excuse me while I vomit.
LINK to article: http://family.org/cforum/fnif/commentary/a0035918.cfm
You can get jail time for doing this to a dog.
And the reason they administer drugs to patients who are dying peacefully of starvation and dehydration is why?
And if it's peaceful, it must be an acceptable thing to do to somebody.
Fools.