[winstonchurchill]

WC: OK, here's a Golden Rule test for all the 'cautious', 'eloquent' ones around here. Anyone who believes that Terri hasn't suffered enough and deserves to be pumped some more has to be locked to a nursing home bed and be stomach pumped with slurry and wear diapers for the precise duration of any additional judicial appeals or procedures. What's that I hear? "Oh, well, that's not fair ... it's not relevant ... see I read the Bible as saying ... after all, she's the one who is disabled ... I'm just pronouncing 'God's will' for her not for me." Yes, I thought so. You guys make the Pharisees of our Lord's time look good in comparison.

WOSG: So we should 'off' any old people who use 'depends' and put em out of their misery?

Change the subject and avoid the issue, huh?

The question is, under our Lord's test of the Golden Rule, what would you want to have done to you if you were in Terri's condition (whatever you call it): more pumping of slurry and diapers or go home to Heaven? Which is it? No crossed fingers now.

You see you folks are just plain phonies. You always want to talk about how 'considerate' you are being of Terri; all the while wanting to treat her like a CPR practice dummy or one of those little dolls my granddaughters have that little girls can force water into and pretend to be giving them a bottle. Well, here' a news flash for you. Terri is not a practice dummy or a little doll, she is a woman who has been trapped in a situation you would never want for yourself for the last 15 years, the last 7 of which are due to people like you.

She's no different than you. Given the choice between where she is and Heaven, she'd take Heaven. (So would you if you were honest.) She told us so.

In your self-righteous sanctimony at her expense, you want to repeal the Golden Rule.

[walford]

You're in much better company:

Quote:

...a committee set out to establish practical means by which such "mercy deaths" could be granted to other children who had no prospect for meaningful life. The hospital at Eglfing-Haar, under the direction of Hermann Pfannmuller, M.D., slowly starved many of the disabled children in its care until they died of "natural causes." Other institutions followed suit, some depriving its small patients of heat rather than food. Medical personnel who were uncomfortable with what they were asked to do were told this was not killing: they were simply withholding treatment and "letting nature take its course."

Over time Pfannmuller set up Hungerhauser (starvation houses) for the elderly. By the end of 1941, euthanasia was simply "normal hospital routine."

In the meantime, no law had been passed permitting euthanasia. Rather, at the end of 1939, Hitler signed this letter:

"Reichleader Bouhler and Dr. Med. Brandt are responsibly commissioned to extend the authority of physicians to be designated by name so that a mercy death may be granted to patients who, according to human judgment, are incurably ill according to the most critical evaluation of the state of their disease."

Interestingly, physicians were not ordered to participate, but merely permitted to if they so wished. It was to be a private matter between the doctor and his patient (or the family if the patient was unable to speak for himself).

Brandt, testifying at his trial in Nuremburg after the war, insisted:

"The underlying motive was the desire to help individuals who could not help themselves and were thus prolonging their lives in torment. ... To quote Hippocrates today is to proclaim that invalids and persons in great pain should never be given poison. But any modern doctor who makes so rhetorical a declaration without qualification is either a liar or a hypocrite. ... I never intended anything more than or believed I was doing anything but abbreviating the tortured existence of such unhappy creatures."

Brandt's only regret was that the dead patients' relatives may have been caused pain. Yet he justified even that: "I am convinced that today they have overcome their distress and personally believe that the dead members of their families were given a happy release from their sufferings." (A. Mitcherlich & F. Mielke, The Death Doctors, pp. 264-265.)

Then we have Michael Schiavo's mercy killing advocate lawyer George Felos saying that Terri was being slowly starved/dehydrated to death according to her wishes based soley on the testimony of people who all were named 'Schiavo' 

And who is this George Felos? Some excerpts from his book Litigation as Spiritual Practice (Blue Dolphin Publishing, 2002).
He describes how he underwent a trancendental experience after a 10-day yoga retreat in 1988:

Quote:

“I lost the boundary between the idea of myself and the world around me and gained immeasurably. Subject and object merged, and in some way I experienced the essence of each thing my consciousness touched. I felt the joy of grass as it grew and sense the genetic code by which it manifested into physical reality. In ecstasy I became the solemn grace and beauty of a tree and new the freedom of the passing clouds. I don’t speak metaphorically.” (50)

“When I perceived and felt someone so completely, I often could hear her thoughts and knew what she was going to say before she said it. It was as if the individual before me was transparent and I could see the person’s form, yet look through it at the same time.” (51)

Armed with this special ability, he used his powers to act as attorney for a woman who wanted her cousin to be taken off a feeding tube. The nursing home would not do that because the patient still had brain activity but was unable to speak.

Quote:

“After she departed it seemed evident to me that the case, given my recently acquired fascination with death and dying, was a blessing rather than a coincidence.” (61)

“‘Mrs. Browning, do you want to die? … Do you want to die?’—I near shouted as I continued to peer into her pools of strikingly beautiful but incognizant blue. It was so eerie. Her eyes were wide open and crystal clear, but instead of the warmth of lucidity, they burned with the ice of expressionlessness.” (63)

“As I continued to stay beside Mrs. Browning at her nursing home bed, I felt my mind relax and my weight sink into the ground. I began to feel light-headed as I became more reposed. Although feeling like I could drift into sleep, I also experienced a sense of heightened awareness. As Mrs. Browning lay motionless before my gaze, I suddenly heard a loud, deep moan and scream and wondered if the nursing home personnel heard it and would respond to the unfortunate resident. In the next moment, as this cry of pain and torment continued, I realized it was Mrs. Browning. I felt the mid-section of my body open and noticed a strange quality to the light in the room. I sensed her soul in agony. As she screamed I heard her say, in confusion, ‘Why am I still here … why am I here?’ My soul touched hers and in some way I communicated that she was still locked in her body. I promised I would do everything in my power to gain the release her soul cried for. With that the screaming immediately stopped. I felt like I was back in my head again, the room resumed its normal appearance, and Mrs. Browning, as she had throughout this experience, lay silent. I knew without a doubt what had transpired was real and dispelled the thought as intellect’s attempt to assert its own version of reality.” (73)

Well, at least we can count on the pro-death side's rationality and compassion!