[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[madprof98]

A wonderful essay! Thanks so much for posting it.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

Very interesting essay.

I was with the author until this:

"Hospital administrators are generally pleased with bioethicists and the rationalizations they provide for ceasing care of the helpless and the disabled. By the same token, their presence is generally shunned by doctors and nurses, whose medical and moral vocabulary draws from different sources, and whose training and experience have disposed them in a different direction. To most doctors and nurses, in any case, the idea that one can control the manner and pace of one’s dying is largely a fantasy. They have seen what they have seen, and what they know is that at the crucial moments in this process, no document on earth can substitute for the one-on-one judgment, fallible as it may ultimately be, of a sensible, humane, and experienced physician".

At which point I realized that he was asserting that his authority should trump my expressed wishes.

[SteveMcKing]

Please call her "Schindler".

[Layer Seven]

"Bringing her into a hospice for the performance of this sustaining mission was another excellent clinical decision."

Your pedantic and verbose posting makes it clear that medical science, especially neurology and bioethics, failed Terri Schindler (and all of us) as much as did her faithless husband, and the bumbling, conflicted, and incompetent courts and other officials, of Florida.

Best regards,
Layer Seven

[Cicero]

Actually, this essay is filled with one misstatement after another. Her husband did not despair of her recovery. After he got the settlement money, he tried to kill her as rapidly as possible. The physicians who examined her were not qualified. They were both famous euthanasia advocates. She was not given careful examinations. Numerous neurologists have said that she needed to be examined over the course of a number of visits, and she never had an MRI because Michael Schiavo would not allow it.

There is no evidence that she was bulemic, but there are grounds for hypothesizing that he husband beat or strangled her the day she went into the hospital.

And so forth. This is a very careless summary of the case by a doctor who never examined the patient. After reading this analysis, I would not want anyone I cared for to be under his care.

[bvw]

Passive before a murder, just a passing well-spoken observer. "It’s just about normal."

Where is his anger?

Where is his anger?

[veronica]

Wonderful post, from Commentary, one the great Conservative journals.

Naturally the clown goons are in full spitting mode.

Something about life and death issues is beyond their ability to address seriously, like grown-ups. As you so aptly put it, it's an unserious place.

[Ciexyz]

A painful read. Bookmarked for further study.

[MarMema]

The more this culture continues to influence our thinking, the deeper are likely to become the divisions within our society and within our families, the more hardened our hatreds, and the more manifold our fears. More of us will die prematurely; some of us will even be persuaded that we want to.

Thank you so much for this excellent read.

I now have a real estate agent in a foreign country. I have lost faith in the future of this one, because of our killing of Terri.

[backhoe]

These are the defining issues of our times:

-Men(ace) in Black? SCOTUS goes Rogue...--

-Useless Eaters vs The Death Cult--

-Thunder on the Border-- (Minuteman Project)--

1- an unaccountable Judiciary.
2- whose life is it, anyway? Yours, or someone else's?
3- whose Country is it?

There are other vital issues, of course- but these three will determine just who we really are as a nation.

These are the defining issues of our times:

-Men(ace) in Black? SCOTUS goes Rogue...--

-Useless Eaters vs The Death Cult--

-Thunder on the Border-- (Minuteman Project)--

1- an unaccountable Judiciary.
2- whose life is it, anyway? Yours, or someone else's?
3- whose Country is it?

There are other vital issues, of course- but these three will determine just who we really are as a nation.

[TheSarce]

BioDeathicist Ping to Terri's list.

Ohioan from Florida's ping list, v.5-19-05

[Robert A Cook PE]

Sounds likeit was written by a professional from the husband's legal team (er, promotions department) and TV advisor.

The "facts" and "summaries" and conclusions work only if you believe everything Schiavo said was true.

And very little of that can be verified, and much of the rest has already been proven as false.

[Goodgirlinred]

Excellent post. I do have one point I would like to bring up. Terri should have been turned every one to two hours, she should have had passive range of motion exercising, and she should have had complete oral care twice a day with swabbing to moisten her mouth in intervals. That should have prevented some of the pressure sores, lessened the severity of the contractures, and prevented or lessened the tooth decay. That is good nursing care.

Otherwise, I agree wholeheartedly with the good doctor. Just because Michael "lost hope" should not have been a reason to terminate Terri's life. He could have divorced her, turned over her guardianship to her parents, and gone about his life.

[Saundra Duffy]

To read later.

[trisham]

Excellent article. Thanks.

[Cboldt]

Bump - good article. Thanks for posting it.

I think the medical profession has more than a few bad [ethical] eggs in it. Probably more than the author wants to admit.

[Old Professer]

It is said that all cultural shifts have a hinge-point, a place in time and conflict where future events are seen to move away from the old to a new attitude and behavior whether it be from an event as horrible at the time as a brutal war or as seemingly innocuous as a wholesale lowering of inhibitions in dress and manner of speaking the culture itself seldom looks back and almost never reverts.

After reading this well-studied piece I have chosen from it this quote as illustration:

All this has resulted in a steady diminution in the bonds of implicit trust between patients and their doctors and its replacement, in some cases by suspicion or outright hostility, in many other cases by an almost reflexive unwillingness on the part of doctors to impose their own considered, prudential judgments—including their ethical judgments—on the course of treatment. In the meantime, a new discipline has stepped into the breach; its avowed purpose is to help doctors and patients alike reach decisions in difficult situations, and it is now a mandatory subject of study in medical and nursing schools.

[Saundra Duffy]

This is a fabulous piece written by a fabulous human being. Thank God for folks like this - with a heart and a kind mind. I am in awe.

My only criticism is that he gives credit to the hospice staff - like they were aghast at what they were asked to do, namely to participate in the hideous death of an innocent woman. I think the writer doesn't understand that the hospice workers in there were hand-picked - they were the ones willing and able to participate in the killing of Terri. This writer is so kind-hearted that he couldn't see that. Anyway, that's my opinion.

This guy is a saint or something close to it.

[Sun]

It was misleading for the NYTimes mag to put Reagan and Goldwater in the same category.

Reagan was pro-LIFE; Goldwater was pro-ABORTION.