Posted on 01/29/2006 10:06:22 AM PST by 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.
I have.
What "chances" are those, exactly? :)
>>>
No.
That's why you're not a conservative.
Unlike most moderns, I still believe that character tells.
Initially, surgery to repair the spina bifida and a shunt to drain the fluid on the brain were planned, but after consulting with a neurologist who predicted severe mental retardation, the parents refused consent....When the case was first brought to the court the first judge ordered surgery as ordinary care and necessary to save the baby's life. Two later court rulings reversed this decision and upheld the parents' decision to deny surgery.
The media also promoted quality-of-life arguments in highlighting the parents' suffering and right to privacy to make decisions about care for their baby while totally ignoring the unalienable right to life of the baby.
Three doctors interviewed by Newsday all agreed that surgery at birth would have led to a much better outcome. Dr. John Freeman, head of birth defects treatment at Johns Hopkins, said that treated spina bifida patients "will have normal or near normal intelligence and none will have unremitting pain."
Dr. Butler, the neurosurgeon who testified at the original case, later said that the decision not to operate to close the baby's spine caused an infection that delayed implanting the shunt to drain excess fluid from the brain. This delay was the cause of most of the brain damage Kerri Lynn has today.
It was Dr. C. Everett Koop, the renowned pediatric surgeon, and Surgeon General at the time, who tried to have independent doctors examine the baby but was refused. He stated, "If they had been brought in, she probably would have been treated and she would have been normal today."
I reviewed the record with an open mind, and I am convinced, beyond any doubt, that he blew it as a matter of law, and as a matter of construing evidence.
The civil law process being what it is, once found wrong, error is very difficult to reverse. Civil law is ill equipped to handle matters where life itself is the subject of the remedy sought in court.
Reminds me of a comment from my eighth grade teacher.
The moment you are born you are getting in line for your own funeral cortege.
With such a nihilistic outlook I guess we mght as well go back to living in caves. We can sit in there and wait for our food to come to us.
Since we will all die, anyway, why make the effort to hunt, or gather food?
Some people just don't want to have a rational discussion on end-of-life issues. Maybe it's because they don't want to face the prospect of their own death; I don't know. However, like it or not, with continued advances in medical technology it is likely that more and more family members will be confronted with these kinds of life-and-death decisions.
Yes, none of the anti-terri crowd seems to grasp the irony of a legal machine that puts somebody's life on a par with who gets Grandma's old armoire.
Gee. Why be so critical?
His chances are whatever he perceives them to be. People act on perceptions, not necessarily on reality. :)
How many years' experience on the bench do you have?
Simply because I recognize that we're all going to die, doesn't mean that I'm not enjoying life to the fullest. Sigh! Must all you Terri-bots resort to histrionics rather than engaging in discussion?
It's sad, but understandable that those who craft the civil procedure (legislatures and courts, working together) haven't stepped up to the plate on this.
You're not supposed to question certain outlandish, baseless and irrational allegations, I'll have you know.
Who was talking about you?
I was talking about the incipient nihilism, negativism, and fatalism that lurks around the edges of a vibrant society and tries to "solve" problems by eliminating lives.
It's hard to even imagine that many advances in medicine have been made by pro-euthanasia folks.
What a drag those nihilists are.
Boy, the ACLU has them running scared. And the ACLU in Florida keeps holding award dinners for judges who support killing people. They have a great PR machine.
Nut jobs like Felos, who thinks he can hear another person's thoughts, probably scare off people, too. I'd like to keep my distance from that creepy guy.
The pro-deathers use inchoate platitudes and generalizations to try to win over people who don't have the time to read up on what's happening.
Eventually, I hope, some brave soul will say,
"Enough with the smoke-screen of feel-good generalizations.
We have to open our eyes and really look at the details surrounding end-of-life care.
We must make sure safeguards are in place to protect innocent lives.
If, at first, we only save a handful of innocent lives, it will be worth the effort."
Who can win an argument in a court before a judge who abuses logic and common sense?
Illogical Greer accepted Jay Wolfson's illogic that an inverse statement (B) "I don't think, therefore, I am not," follows logically from the statement (A), "I think, therefore, I am."
Elementary logic shows Wolfson is wrong to make an assumption that an inverse statement is true
Screwy things that the "Kill-Terri" hordes have said and done
1. Ed Koch thinks Terri needs to watch TV to know she is starving.
2. George Felos thinks Terri looks "beautiful" after her week of forced starvation.
3. Doctor Cranford, who helped Michael win Terri's "right to die" does not believe Terri has constitutional rights
4. Terri said "No tubes for me, " but Michael ignored Terri's "wishes" and had a tube inserted
Elementary Illogic
A Primer
by George Greer
With a forward by Jay Wolfson
I carefully chose every word. I think you are the one that didn't bother to read.
...and the fact remains that no court looked at the evidence with a fresh outlook on it. They only looked at the evidence in the eyes of one judge. That is by the way what the congress asked of the judges, if they would have a fresh review of the facts in the case. They would do it for the worst of criminals but not her.
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