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."
The black and white version depresses me after seeing the Colorized version. I'm almost 60.
you're right, of anything but unnatural causes....
By the way in old south when a slave was cripple or too old to work did master kill them off or did master still feed them even when they were just a burden on masters bottom line? Did the old south have laws on these types of issues?
I prefer the title, A Christmas Carol, myself, since that is what we always called it.
But , I watch the version with the introduction by Patrick McNee, and it is entitled "Scrooge."
well what do you think?
wait wait, let me guess, I am part of the culture of death (whatever that means on FR) and I am just a scumbag liberal in conservative clothing since I wont advocate storming the hospice with marines nor will I say I agree with anything the nutjob with the bullhorn screams, simply because he is only making the situation for the other families in the hospice worse....
its called having a living will....
which I do have
Sorry, I don't know. But I know the old-time landowners in Germany didn't take care of their "serfs/workers" when they became too old to work.
There are qualities in B&W films that are totally absent in a film made in color and that's one reason they're far better left alone.
I'm wondering if living wills which indicate a preference to be fed and hydrated, might eventually be overruled if two or three doctors agree the person is PVS.
PVS patients have no rights, according to Cranford. So why should they have a right to hydration?
Good for your daughter. I can see you have done a great job with her. She is a THINKER!! And from the sounds of it a SMART one at that!!
one of Terri's problems is a horribly written law by the state of Florida.
in way shape or form is water and food a form of life support. That law should have been repealed immediately....
Ah, Rome! Bread, Circuses, and immigration to do the jobs the Romans didn't want. The smell of cultural decay in the air.
No doubt. This is just greasing the skids for Socialize Medicine in the US. Gotta cut costs you know.
Thanks for telling us.
Thanks
You're correct.
All of ACC is depressing in the B&W version. And who are you to tell me what I have to look for in fims?
There are qualities in B&W films that are totally absent in a film made in color and that's one reason they're far better left alone.
I was against "the very principle" of colorization. And I dislike Ted Turner. But I like the colorized version and I can always watch my b&w copy if I want to. (But, somehow, I never want to watch that version)
As my father used to say, "De gustibus non est disputandum, said the fat lady when she kissed the pig."
I agree. And I even suspect that living wills will be ignored, if enough doctors agree the person is "never going to show improvement." ("Improvement" seems to be very important to many doctors.)
I agree.
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