Posted on 03/25/2005 5:01:12 PM PST by Wolfstar
Karen Ann Quinlan was the first modern icon of the right-to-die debate. The 21-year-old Quinlan collapsed at a party after swallowing alcohol and the tranquilizer Valium on April 14, 1975. Doctors saved her life, but she suffered brain damage and lapsed into a persistent vegetative state.
Karen Ann Quinlan
A dispute arose between the hospital officials and Karen’s parents about whether or not she should be removed from her respirator. Karen’s parents did not want to take extraordinary means to keep Karen alive; however, the hospital officials disagreed and wanted to keep her alive. The Quinlans believed that they had the right to legal guardianship for Karen. This led to two court cases involving who should become Karen’s legal guardian.
Her family waged a much-publicized legal battle for the right to remove her life support machinery. The Quinlans lost the first court case at the U.S. Supreme Court, but were victorious in New Jersey’s Supreme Court. This decision gave Joseph Quinlan, Karen’s father, legal guardianship over Karen. As a result, the Quinlan family decided to remove Karen from her respirator and the physicians obliged.
Unexpectedly, Karen continued breathing and was moved to Morris View Nursing Home where she lived for 10 years. She passed away on June 11, 1985.
The New Jersey Supreme Court Ruling became a precedent case for ethical dilemmas involving right-to-die cases in two significant ways. First, this case led to the requirement that all hospitals, hospice, and nursing homes have ethics committees. Second, it led to the creation of advance directives, in particular the living will.
Nancy Cruzan
The way Nancy's family engraved her headstone
Like Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan became a public figure after entering a persistent vegetative state. A 1983 auto accident left Cruzan permanently unconscious and without any higher brain function, kept alive only by a feeding tube and steady medical care. Cruzan's family waged a legal battle to have her feeding tube removed. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the Cruzans had not provided "clear and convincing evidence" that Nancy Cruzan did not wish to have her life artificially preserved. The Cruzans later presented such evidence to the Missouri courts, which ruled in their favor in late 1990. The Cruzans stopped feeding Nancy in December of 1990, and she died later the same month.
Much has changed in the years since Nancy's death. The federal government passed a law requiring all persons entering a hospital in the United States be told about living wills. Most states have laws governing advance directives, durable powers of attorney and health care proxies.
Now, nearly 30 years to the day that Karen Quinlan collapsed, we have the Terri Schiavo case making headlines. In the intervening 30 years much precedent has been set and much case law has been settled in the so-called right-to-die area. Estimates are that some 30,000-35,000 people in the United States are currently in similar or identical states as Terri Schiavo, yet we do not hear about them. Life support measures -- including feeding tubes -- are removed virtually daily. Yet we do not hear about those cases. Why? Because the only thing unique about the Schiavo case is the epic family feud propelling it into the headlines.
People who so passionately argue for Schiavo to be saved have nothing to say about all the other similar or identical cases. Why? If one believes that all life must be saved, then why fight only for this single life?
The facts and parties just didn't line up for Karen like they did for Terri.
Thanks. I'm glad to find that someone besides me understands that.
It's a liberal trial balloon, a sort of revolution putsh against the pro-life plank. The MSM chose this case because it seems they knew they could win it and make a point through it. This is my sincerest of belief that this whole thing is being staged, the actors, especialy nutso "husband" are well controled.
Remember, this is the age of Elian presaging 911, a message to the world to Castro like terrorists that they can have custodies over our children for social "welfare".
The Terri Schiavo thing is a counter war for terror waged by liberals, telling terrorists abroad that we do not care about subhuman Jews in Israel or that we wont look at hard evidences or key witnesses against them if they are brain damaged... we will forget who is a terrorist, so long as they are not brain damaged...
The Terri thing also indicates how our intel and judicial services are incapable of preserving evidence and using it to protect us, and instead are more intent on covering it up. It's an interpenetration model with Internationalist ruling against Death penalty at the Supremes combined with Internationalist ruling at the locality with the Terri case.
It is a call to the satans of the world, so to speak, a call for readiness to have them rule with death over us, a call to justify the suicide bomber whose plug is pulled by bad life....
IT is a call to ignore evidence and cover up evidence of very real foreign threats of weapons of mass destructions, of the reality of terrorist regimes dumbing down their people and thus getting a default right to their life or death.
WE are going to get nuked.
To repeat, except for the epic battle between the relatives, the Schiavo case is not unique. It is not unique under the law. There is 30 years of settled case law in such matters, both at national and state levels.
Nancy Cruzan did not have the benefit of the Internet, either.
Why all the passion over judicial activism, homosexual 'marriage', abortion etcetera? You are witnessing moral conservatism. Those passionate over issues as these are now in power. The morally corrupt democrats are on the sidelines and the moral equivocators e.g. libertarians are just observers as they have always been and will always be...
Apparently, you don't understand the question or the point. The point is that there have been and are many cases both comparable to and identical to the Schiavo case in the 30 years since Karen Ann Quinlan's collapse led to the first "right-to-die" court case. It was followed by the Cruzan case and many others. Schiavo is not unique.
Nonsense...At one point early on, Terri was able to walk albeit with a bar...According to recent reports, she was trying to talk...On a recent video in her room, her mother was talking to her and she smiled, then briefly turned her eyes to the camera and looked straight into the camera (she's aware of her surroundings)...The nurses claim she can swallow food (with therapy, she may be able to feed herself)...Some doctors say they can improve her capabilities...And most importantly, many doctors say she is NOT pvs...
Because her husband has a conflict of interest and her parents want to take care of her.
What I said was, and I quote myself:
***Since they described her as brain dead, she must have been given nourishment. You've just pointed up the difference between Terri and Karen Ann Quinlan which the writer ignored.***
The question is not whether this story "deserves to be continued." The question is, why all the sound and fury over Schiavo when there are many thousands of comparable cases out there right now. Why is her life worth more than all the others? So much so, that even the U.S. Congress and President of the United States intervened on her behalf.
Terri's parents WANT to keep her alive and receive therapy. The COURT has MANDATED that FOOD AND WATER be withheld based on a NOVEL idea that MEDICAL TREATMENT includes Food and Water.
I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but the Schaivo FACTS do not compare to the FACTS in the other cases.
Yes, there was. It was the first such case. Even so, the Congress and the President didn't insert themselves into that case, or any of the many thousands of others since, as they have for Schiavo.
Ping
Besides hell, I mean.
I believe you. I'm trying encourage people to raise their eyes from one case and look at the larger issues that affect all of us. Might call for a little less emotion and greater critical thinking, but hey, what the heck. They say exercising the gray matter helps keep Alzheimers at bay.
Wrong. Estimates are that currenly up to 35,000 people in the U.S. are in persistent vegitative states. They are all alive in the same sense Ms. Schiavo is alive.
Sigh.
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