Posted on 03/30/2005 10:15:58 PM PST by freespirited
With the impending death of Terri Schiavo, US euthanasia advocates have scored a public relations hat-trick. Within a single month Clint Eastwood won an Oscar for Million Dollar Baby and The Sea Inside, about a quadriplegic who commits suicide, was feted as the best foreign film.
Now, after more than a decade of litigation, a 41-year-old brain-damaged Florida woman is slowly dying at her husband's request. What's more, recent polls show that most Americans are so confused about end-of-life treatment that they think that this is a good thing.
Who is to blame for this fear of extreme disability? Pro-lifers might plausibly blame "left-leaning media" for the Oscars. But the fate of Terri Schiavo is an own goal. Their lawyers were outsmarted at every turn by George Felos, the lawyer for Schiavo's husband.
Felos was the heavy artillery of the right-to-die movement, a cunning strategist who had won Florida's most influential right-to-die case in 1989, and who is a media-savvy talk-show guest.
Schiavo's death warrant was effectively signed in 2000, with a decision by Florida judge George Greer that she would have chosen to have her tube removed. It is this judgement that was upheld time and time again by superior courts. Pro-life bloggers have demonised Greer. But they ought to read some of the evidence.
First of all, the Schindler family were tricked. They are loving and compassionate people, but they were manoeuvred into giving a incredibly distorted picture of what the Catholic Church teaches about patients in a persistent vegetative state.
Her brother said that it would be a joy for him to see Schiavo alive - in a respirator or with limbs amputated.
Her mother stated that discomfort or pain was not a factor in discontinuing life support. The mother and the brother and sister all agreed that if they were in Schiavo's situation and had gangrenous limbs that had to be amputated, they would choose that rather than die.
But Catholics are not masochists. Their church has always taught, in the words of a 1980 Vatican document, that patients can "refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted".
To compound the confusion, Felos wheeled out a hospital chaplain, Father Gerard Murphy, as "an expert in the area of the Catholic Church's position on end of life care". Father Murphy said that removing Schiavo's feeding tube was consistent with his church's teaching. This is nonsense, of course. The Pope, also an expert on the Catholic Church's position, recently stated that "a sick person in a vegetative state . . . still has the right to basic health care (nutrition, hydration, cleanliness, warmth, etc)." But given the uncertainty about Schiavo's religious beliefs and the apparent insensitivity of her family, Greer found Murphy's testimony sympathetic and "completely candid".
Still worse were the medical experts. Felos easily found two "clear and convincing" neurologists who testified that Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. With all of the American medical profession a phone call away, the Schindlers' team wheeled out two duds.
One was a Dr William Maxfield, who was not even a neurologist, but an expert in hyperbaric medicine - breathing pressurised oxygen.
The other was a Dr William Hammesfahr, a neurologist whose garish website touts him as a "Nobel Prize nominee". Nobel Prize winners normally publish papers in major journals, unlike Dr Hammesfahr, whose publications are few and obscure. However, he was a 1992 keynote speaker for the Alabama Academy of Osteopathic Physicians. You get the picture: one random and one shonk.
To break the tie, Greer engaged a fifth neurologist, Dr Ronald Cranford. He is well spoken and highly convincing. He is also a spokesman for the right-to-die movement. His testimony tilted the scales.
The fundamental problem with the case mounted by the Schindler family is that they depicted Schiavo's plight as a religious issue.
In fact, it is a human rights issue. Schiavo is not in pain and is not dying. She is not on life support. Her care is not expensive. Why does her disability deserve a death sentence?
The American disability lawyer and activist Harriet McBryde Johnson put it clearly: "This belief that withdrawing a feeding tube is different than other killing - why is that a reasonable distinction? I haven't heard anybody say it would be OK to kill Terri Schiavo if she weren't on a feeding tube."
Given that US law favours living wills, even though studies have shown that they often don't work, the fight to save Schiavo's life was bound to be difficult. But it could have been won if it had been fought by professionals. It wasn't.
Michael Cook is the editor of BioEdge, an email newsletter on bioethics. mcook@australasianbioethics.org
Copied & saved- I greatly appreciate that info.
You're welcome! And I greatly appreciate your files!!
Ping. Please note the PDIA with today's date in red.
Well! Will you look at that!
New at Project on Death In America - Current as of March 31, 2005
See Windchimes link!
Was it wrong for Tom Delay to unplug his Dad, also causing his death? What did he do to deserve that?
Maybe it would be better to let families decide these matters than to drag in the Federal government and call for armed uprisings every time a person nears the end of his or hers life?
And bumping you, windchime.
After leaving that PDIA site stagnet for years, why is he updating it now?
My guess is that they just did not have the money for a high profile lawyer.
I thought the laws in this country were made to damn the guilty, not the innocent. Guess I was mistaken!
Maybe he had to pull an Osama with it until the heat was off.
The Schindlers made the same mistakes as your average Conservatives always do. They did not realize they were up against far more than they knew. The Doctors, Hospitals, Insurance Companies, Social Security all have an interest in seeing Mrs. Schiavo die, not to mention a the inconvenience to her husband.
Not once can I recall a party directly related to the Schindler do any PR about the far broader issues of how this can effect everyone else. Not once. It was all centered on only Mrs. Schiavo herself. What was needed instead here was a PR campaign to be run concurrently with the case(I remember a small hysteria about euthanasia when I was a kid in Catholic school and being told it was sinful), spelling out the details of what kind of precedent this sets, how it will effect people of all stripes, how Mrs. Schiavo was neglected by her husband and not allowed every chance of recovery etc.
As a result of this case I am now for changing the filibuster rule, and whatever else it takes to reign in these Courts/Secularists. We are in trouble in this country, and I don't think we are going to get out of it peacefully.
Well, guess what? I just set the temperature for Broil.
Maybe if Michael Schiavo had been reasonable, it would not have come to this. It always starts with some hardline uncompromising party like that to drag it into the public sphere. And I think it may be good this time because this case is loaded with issues far beyond Mrs. Schiavo.
Given the 3000 abortions America has a day -- protected by the courts -- I was actually surprised to see how hard Congress and many Americans have fought for Terri. The disrespect for the sanctity of life in our country - and the blind eye to what impact it has in terms of the deliberate deaths of innocent people - is staggering.
The aftermath of Terri's fight will go on for a long time. Hard to tell now if it will be for the general good or bad, at least in my lifetime.
Have to trust the Lord, even when things are bleak.
-- Joe
his comment is # 2
No, it was not wrong for Delay to take his dad off the feeding tube since his dad was aged and in the process of dying already. There is a tremendous difference between prolonging death(Delay example) and prolonging life (Schindler case). Plus, in the Delay case, there were apparently no doubts at all concerning the father's wishes.
Families do decide these matters all the time without Federal intervention. Please remember who was the first to drag the government into the matter:Michael Schiavo as he sought the court's aid in killing his wife---to get around the laws that we have against murder.
As to armed uprisings every time a person nears the end of his or hers life: you overstate your case and distort the facts. Conservatives are not calling for armed uprisings. However, we see a danger of that in the future unless these tyrant judges are brought under control. If tyranny goes unchecked and the government, rather than stopping it, actually becomes a party to it, what is left for the people to do? It was this kind of situation that sparked the events of 1776.
"The aftermath of Terri's fight will go on for a long time"
Makes me wonder why Mr. Schiavo and company are being so adamant in view of so many reasonable compromises available. They have been and will continue to be tied up in this for years. There are some major things going on in the background here that have not been revealed.
They were out-lawyered from the start, and the judicial decisions based on that were what was upheld from then on.
soros.
says it all.
You might find this post interesting too: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1371538/posts?page=205#205
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