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I was in high school during the Quinlan event. We all talked about it for months. One needs to swallow an awful lot of valium and booze to go into a coma. At least ten valiums and a six pack just put you in a dopey state and you experience a loss of short term memory. In the early 80's I remembered the Quinlan event again as she came close to death. The story was in the news every day and on early talk radio nonstop. She kept getting recurring bouts of pneumonia due to her immobility and shallow breathing. The pneumonias became a monthly thing. It was at least six months of suffering from pneumonia and antibiotic treatments until the lungs just gave out.

She was not ignored and it was quite controvercial in the Philadelphia area. News wasn't 24/7 and there was no internet. Granted CNN had just gone on air, but it wasn't their cup of tea.

She was not ignored...

I know Karen Ann Quinlan was not ignored. Quite the opposite. Her's was a ground-breaking case. So was the Cruzan case, which more closely mirrored the Schiavo case. It's due to Quinlan and Cruzan that we now have living wills and 30 years of settled case law about the "right to die."

The point of this thread is that the Schiavo case is not unique in any respect whatsoever except for the epic quarrel between her relatives.