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I am shocked in this case at the ease with which the husband can make this decision.

Lacking a living will it does seem a bit shocking but if you consider that it is the spouce that normally makes the call in these cases then it isn't all too shocking.

I don't know what to make of the husband. On one hand if what he says about this being his wife expressed desire then it seems that he is doing the loving thing and making sure her wishes be carried out despite what her parents might want. However, having read all the things about his refusing some basic care and rehab on the outside chance that she could improve seems to say that he is anything but loving. So what does that leave? That he wants her to die for the sheer sake of his hatered. Or that he stands to gain monetarily if she is dead.

I have heard it stated that he does stand to gain but I have not seem that in any official sense. Many here have said as much but they never seem to provide any documentation to support that assumption.

Also, if her does get some money how much can possibly be left?

I think he just wants her gone so he can continue on w/his new family.

OTOH, if he did precipitate her condition, he may be terrified she will recover enough to tell on him.

He must have a sweeping Power of Attorney granted by Greer.

You said in another post that the GAL had made his decision based on a review of the medical and legal records. If those records contain flawed information, then the review itself was also flawed. It is similar to the problems involved in so-called meta-analysis...you can _analyze_ the data, but that doesn't always show the errors or the fraud inherent in that data.

Just intuition, but this entire case smells bad. Were I in charge, I would order everything to date declared moot, reinstall the feeding tube and order a complete medical review of Terri by a new panel of neurologists from outside the state of Florida. If warranted, I would order a complete rehab protocol for 8-12 months and then have Terri reviewed again. From everything I have read, I will bet she would show _some_ improvement.

We are medical massage therapists. If I had a dollar for every time PT (under time and insurance reimbursement constraints) had to sign off on someone saying they had reached their healing plateau and then we were able to facilitate an increase in range of motion and functionality, I could quit working. I don't think the average person realizes how much rehab can be limited by what the insurance companies decide or how treatment by various specialties can be constrained by the restrictions competing modalities can have placed into licensing law.

Medical specialists all have competing worldviews, as well. Physicians will say about PT:"I don't know what they do down there". About massage:"I don't know what you are doing, but keep on doing it." Today, everyone is a specialist and they often have very little knowledge about the capabilities of each other's modality.

It isn't just the judiciary that is broken, IMO.