Frist: Gov't Unwanted in End-Of-Life Cases

AP on Yahoo ^ | 1/29/06 | AP

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who took a leading role in the Terry Schiavo case, said Sunday it taught him that Americans do not want the government involved in such end-of-life decisions.

Frist, considered a presidential hopeful for 2008, defended his call for further examinations of the brain-damaged Florida woman during the last days of a bitter family feud over her treatment. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state.

The case became a rallying point for right-to-life advocates, an important segment of the Republican Party. It also drew interest from those supporting the right to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment and led to charges that the GOP was using a family tragedy for political gain.

Asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" if he had any regrets regarding the Schiavo case, Frist said: "Well, I'll tell you what I learned from it, which is obvious. The American people don't want you involved in these decisions."

Schiavo, 41, died March 31, nearly two weeks after her feeding tube was removed and 15 years after her initial collapse and hospitalization. Courts in Florida had supported her husband's contention that she would not want to live in such a state. Her parents and siblings disagreed and for years fought efforts to remove her feeding tube.

An autopsy later showed that Schiavo had suffered severe, irreversible brain damage and was blind.

Frist, R-Tenn., said in the full Senate that he supported what he called "an opportunity to save Mrs. Schiavo's life." A heart surgeon, Frist had viewed video ordered by a court and taken by a board-certified neurologist who had concluded she was not in a persistent vegetative state.

Congress passed a bill to allow a federal court to review the case, and President Bush quickly returned from his Texas ranch to sign the bill into law. But a federal judge refused to order the tube reinserted, a decision upheld by a federal appeals court and the Supreme Court.

Frist was later mocked as having made a diagnosis from his office using a video screen. "I didn't make the diagnosis," Frist said Sunday. "I raised the question of whether or not she was in a persistent vegetative state."

Looking back, Frist said, "When you're taking innocent life, with parents who want that life preserved, you've got to make sure, and therefore stepping in to say, let's take one more review, that's what we did."

He added: "I accept the outcome. I don't agree with the moral sense of it."

Frist plans to leave the Senate when his second term expires in January 2007. He said Sunday he will return to his home in Tennessee and decide whether to seek the Republican nomination for president.

[BykrBayb]

Thanks for providing the link that proves Frist didn't lie. That's nowhere close to a diagnosis. It's very similar to the tone my own doctor took when explaining that I needed further tests to determine if I had cancer. I didn't accept his advice as a diagnosis and begin chemotherapy and radiation. I got the tests he recommended. Terri wasn't allowed to get the tests that were recommended by Frist and so many others.

[firewalk]

I tried to engage you to give your point of view, but you just want to insult me...

You're insulted?
Good.
Now maybe you'll find someone else to post to.

[HairOfTheDog]

You're an example of the immaturity and hysteria on your side of this debate.

[firewalk]

just can't help yourself can you...

[HairOfTheDog]

Help me out here... I can tell you have something you want to say, I just don't know what it is.

[syriacus]

Sometimes the will of the People is evil, and the job of a just goverment is to turn away that evil will and do what is just, regardless.

Especially because bystanders are usually dragged into the supposedly private/family decision.

That happens because, whenever one person or group is guaranteed "rights," another group or person gets obligations to enforce or carry out those "rights." The people who are asked to enforce or carry out those "rights" may believe they are forced to act against their consciences.

• Pharmacists are told they must distribute "morning after pills."
• Police are told they must make sure the starvation of a brain damaged patient is not interferred with*
• Med students are told they must learn to perform abortions
• Will Justices of the peace be told they must marry same sex couples?

* "[Nancy Cruzan, three days before her death from starvation] turned and looked at me and stared at me with a panicky look, sweating profusely, and the thought I had was, she was thinking, ‘Oh, here’s a policeman, he’ll help me.’ But we weren’t allowed to do that,"...Doug Seneker

[Appalled but Not Surprised]

Thank you. YOU get it.

[mware]

So much for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

[syriacus]

I had to memorize lines from Goethe's eerie poem, Der Erlenkoenig in High school

Wer reitet so spaet durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind.
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,
Er fasst ihn sicher, er haelt ihn warm. [snip]
In seinen Armen das Kind war tot.

In the poem, the father keeps assuring his son that there is nothing to fear. In the end, his son is dead in his arms.

Felos's tongue-flicking assurances that Terri felt no pain were most likely untrue.
Felos not only made sure Terri died, he made sure she died in a horrible way.

[syriacus]

Thank you. YOU get it.

I heard someone mention a this idea on TV about 2 weeks ago. When some folks demand rights for themselves they are, in reality, placing obligations on others, even though they pretend the whole situation is private.

The attempts of the pro-deathers to drag in unwilling outsiders is nauseating.

[Jim Noble]

I have been involved with dying patients since 1976.

Every single law or regulation passed since then (and they are, by now, innumerable) has made the situation worse.

Those who say, don't know and those who know, don't say.

[Drango]

The American people don't want you involved in these decisions.

Word up!

[DLfromthedesert]

The government, in the form of a court, was already involved. What was wrong with giving the parents a say when the "husband" already had another life?

[presently no screen name]

You followed my lead.

[DLfromthedesert]

Gee, so you think feeding is such a big advance in technology?

[DLfromthedesert]

Or go to present day Holland.

[DLfromthedesert]

Did you tell that to the clueless judge who allowed the "husband" to starve this woman to death? It was not HER decision, or her parents, just someone who profited from her death.

[DLfromthedesert]

If Schiavo had allowed her true family members to make the decision, it would have remained private.

[Wheee The People]

So much for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

My "Pursuit of Happiness" doesn't include being keep alive against my will.

[DLfromthedesert]

That would not happen in most cases; this was an unusual case because a stranger who called himself a husband did not defer to the people who really loved this woman.