Posted on 03/30/2005 9:07:57 PM PST by syriacus
It's astounding how many people want Terri Schiavo dead and aren't afraid to say so.
I got clobbered by readers who reacted to Tuesday's column about how the "culture of death" has placed its compassionate arms around Terri, the brain-damaged Florida woman who is being starved to death.
E-mail and phone calls (more than 150 at last count) are running 2-1 against me.
"It's nuts, this 'life at all costs' mentality," a caller said.
There was general agreement: Terri should die and starvation ain't so bad.
"Her parents are being very selfish by keeping her alive. Your reference to her starving like the prisoners [at] Dachau and Bergen-Belsen? Oh, come on. She will not be in any pain. She will go gently to sleep. I'm a nurse."
So let's starve death row inmates instead of killing them with lethal injections. I mean, if starvation is so gentle and painless. Ignore the faint-hearted who gripe this is "cruel and unusual" punishment.
"Her brain is mush. There has never been a case of a person being in a [persistent vegetative] state this long and having any kind of recovery. There's not gonna be a recovery. She's 40-some years old. Who's gonna take care of her? Her parents? They're going to die soon themselves."
A 1984 car crash left Terry Wallis of Mountain View, Ark., a quadriplegic. He lay silently in a "persistent vegetative state" for 19 years. Suddenly, in summer 2003, he began talking. He asked for his mother - and for a Pepsi. I spoke with his parents.
Terry Wallis' wife, after swearing she would care for him forever, left him for another man and had kids with the guy. (Sound familiar?)
Custody was given to his parents, who were often depressed. They prayed a lot.
Today, Terry Wallis is determined to walk. His daughter, Amber, 6 weeks old in 1984, is 21 and cares for him.
The most frequent gripe readers have is that I am not a doctor and so should not comment on Terri Schiavo's medical condition.
"Interesting that you put yourself above trained doctors. As a doctor myself, I find this low mentality repugnant. You and Bush spread this dribble for your own good and care nothing about Terri, her wishes or her husband. Have you, Bush and the Republicans gone brain dead? If this is the case I hope someone pulls your plug." - Bill Helton
I received many comments like that. Reading them gave me a headache - oops, I'm not a doctor. I'm not qualified to make that diagnosis. Sorry.
A neurologist from New Jersey sent me this:
"I fear that our culture will push the line further as to who should live and who should die. I fear for the old, the young, the sick and the helpless. I fear becoming one of the helpless. - Maria Choy, M.D.
Me, too. After Terri Schiavo, who will the culture-of-death vultures circle? A hint. Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist whose medical opinion was key to a Florida judge ordering Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed, was on TV this week candidly admitting he doesn't believe Alzheimer's patients have constitutional rights.
So first it's people like Terri, then the Alzheimer's sufferers, then perhaps end-stage cancer victims, and so forth.
Why not? Who would want to live like that? Are they not burdens?
Charles Dickens captured it when he had Scrooge confront the do-gooders who wanted to save the helpless, deemed worthless to Victorian England.
"If they had rather die they had better do it and decrease the surplus population."
I haven't seen Logan's run, although, my son, who buys and sells videos, has mentioned I should.
The image you posted does a good job of illustrating the awful situation Terri has found herself in.
Why am I not surprised that you won't deal with the substance of my words.
Oh well. Wallow in your ignorance while the crime goes down...
I actually can't wait to read your posts in a few days, they should be hilarious.....
The male columnist is a jerk, YOU supposed know and love this work, but obviously don't understand it at all, and who is the teenager, your kid?
That last paragraph you wrote is banal to the nth degree and utter twaddle.
Told you before, but I'll tell you again, that's a wonderful creation, devolve
I disagree.
With all your parsing you missed Scrooge's point... that he felt weak people are expendable.
A pretty good link to "tour" the world of Logan's Run. I havent seen it in years, this site reminded me of it.
Not really. "LOGAN'S RUN" ( you'd LOVE it, it's in "glorious" color! ) is about everyone having to die/be murdered at age thirty. It was made at the height of the OVER POPULATION SCARE PROPAGANDA.
The next person to have their feeding tube pulled should be The Pope. I mean what the heck, he is just an old useless man that can't talk anymore. Maybe George Felos, Michael Schiavo and the Democrat "Dr. Death/Traitor" Party can go over to Rome and convince the Vatican folks that they should kill the Pope. Have no fear Americans, when the Democrats (Nazis) regain power, all you old folks will eliminated by death. This way the Democrats will have to do absolutely nothing to fix Social Security. Their solution is easy and effective. Instead of killing all the Jews like their brother party, the Nazis, they will kill all old people over sixty-five. Soylent green is around the corner in America.
I fervently hope they are, because that can only mean one thing: The Executive acted.
And if that is so, I will be overjoyed.
But let me tell you this, friend: She is near death. And if she dies, you and the other defenders of the Republican establishment's inaction will have to live with that for the rest of your lives.
As for me, I know I'll be able to live with myself, having expended every financial and political resource I have, small though they are, to try and save her.
Not really what?
Please explain HOW people who are too proud to accept charity and would rather die than go into a poor house ( and no they weren't all "bad" ), are the same thing as Terri having been in a hospital or a hospice for the last 15 years and now having her feeding tube removed. Is she poor? Is she able bodied, but refuses to do work? Has she decided that she'd rather starve to death than to accept charity? NO! None of that is the case at all.
Scrooge was being hit up, in the street, by two men asking him for money. He was already being taxed by his neighborhood church ( yes, dear, churches ran the poor houses and everyone in the parish where the poor house was , was taxed to pay for them!) and the government of England, which he thought was quite enough. He didn't want to give any more of his money for the upkeep of the poor. THE POOR, DEAR, NOT THE DISABLED!
The news folks are using up a lot of air time, telling us how the Pope's feeding tube is different than Terri's.
They don't want us to realize that Terri might be able to eat by mouth again, just as the Pope might eat by mouth.
Keep posting. I get my best insights from people like you.
You really have NO idea what's in ACC; the book nor the movie.
Yes...the WEAK.
How did you get to be the age you are,but have such poor reading comprehension skills?
Keep on digging that hole; soon you'll be totally unable to crawl out of it.
I thought you said poor people had nothing to do with Terri.
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