Re-Defining My Life Away: Turning PVS Patients Into Non-Persons

Life News ^ | 10/1/07 | Laura Echevarria

[wagglebee]

I suspect people like Burton eagerly grasp anything that supposedly supports their position--that individuals declared to be in a PVS are unresponsive—but question the science when it challenges the core of their argument.

This is how the culture of death ALWAYS acts, they ignore anything that doesn't fit their agenda.

[wagglebee]

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[wagglebee]

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[Col Freeper]

I continue to wonder why these type patients (and others), and their care costs, are not taken under the wing of research agencies.

It would seem to be a perfect way to match up continued life support with examination/research into causes, effects, and cures.

[floriduh voter]

bttt

[Cacique]

btt

[MHGinTN]

“Are we going to declare that only individuals who are self-aware AND capable of making conscious decisions ...” How is it that we would arbitrarily cancel her as unable to make conscious decisions when she can hear and respond —at least in her mind— to their directions? Are these scientists so dead in soul that they would not look for some means by which to communicate with this woman since she is able to hear their directions and do something with her mind to show it? God help us, how have we descended so deeply into the utilitarian deathpool?

[cpforlife.org]

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[Jim Noble]

Fred Plum's 1971 paper which coined the term "persistent vegetative state" was a speculative investigation of a certain type of head injury patient.

It was never intended to be put to the uses that legislatures and courts have crafted for it.

If it exists at all, it is a syndrome with varying causes and a diverse set of prognoses.

As a diagnostic category, it should probably be abolished, but it's too useful to politicians and judges for that to happen now.

[Jim Noble]

“Are we going to declare that only individuals who are self-aware AND capable of making conscious decisions ...” How is it that we would arbitrarily cancel her as unable to make conscious decisions when she can hear and respond —at least in her mind— to their directions? Are these scientists so dead in soul that they would not look for some means by which to communicate with this woman since she is able to hear their directions and do something with her mind to show it? God help us, how have we descended so deeply into the utilitarian deathpool?

Most of these cases are quite complex, and your simplification of the decisions which get made - every day, hundreds and hundreds of them - as a "descent into the utilitarian deathpool" is a gross oversimplification.

It has the secondary bad effect of making ordinary people terrified that you will ever gain a smidgen of political power.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

She died She was murdered because some saw her life as unworthy to be lived.

[wagglebee]

I couldn’t agree more!

[MHGinTN]

You must be in a state of bliss, ignoring the reality of our nation’s comoditizing human life and derigating the value of individual human life.

[StAnDeliver]

"Most of these cases are quite complex, and your simplification of the decisions which get made - every day, hundreds and hundreds of them - as a "descent into the utilitarian deathpool" is a gross oversimplification."

Which attitudes currently rule the deathpool -- Burton's or Owen's?

"It has the secondary bad effect of making ordinary people terrified that you will ever gain a smidgen of political power."

I have no doubt that nothing will ever come between your family's decision to Schiavo you someday, should it come to that.

[MHGinTN]

derigating should be ‘derogating’ ... tired mind and fingers.

[Salvation]

Lord, these people are still people. Help to convert the scients’ minds about this issue.

[Reddy]

“Is this where we’re going? Are we going to declare that only individuals who are self-aware AND capable of making conscious decisions AND able to communicate these decisions with ease are worthy to live?”

The easy solution is to always err on the side of life. No problem.

[Reddy]

“Ordinary people” are logical and know that Terri was murdered.

[WOSG]

PVS, especially the term ‘vegetable’ should be abolished on moral grounds: It is an inherently dehumanizing term, as offensive as calling a race of people sub-humans or monkeys. Actually worse, as it is calling us to have less concern for humans than we do for domesticated animals.

No human being is a vegetable, and just as losing one’s limbs doesnt term a human into a worm, losing consciousness doesn’t turn a human into a cabbage.