Posted on 11/28/2009 4:36:46 PM PST by wagglebee
The family of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who was artificially kept alive for 15 years, say they feel both heartbreak and vindication over the news this week that a Belgian man thought to be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) was fully conscious for two decades.
Schiavo, who had been diagnosed with a profound brain injury, was at the center of a seven-year legal tug-of-war that involved Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and even President George W. Bush before a judge granted her husband the right to allow her to die in 2005.
In a strikingly similar case this week, Belgian doctors revealed that Ron Houbens -- thought to have no brain activity since a 1983 car crash -- had actually been paralyzed and was fully conscious, able to hear everything around him but not respond.
With the news that patients can be mentally "locked in" -- unable to breathe or eat on their own or communicate, yet fully aware cognitively --- some religious and ethical groups are saying, "I told you so."
And now the Catholic Church has weighed in, ordering doctors at its hospitals to ignore patients' advanced directives indicating they do not want artificial feeding if they are diagnosed as permanently unconscious.
"This is why we created our foundation, for stories like this man," said Bobby Schindler, executive director of the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation.
"Tens of thousands of people with cognitive injuries like these are using PVS to diagnose and kill," he told ABCNews.com. "We are learning how unscientific the diagnosis is. It's completely subjective and we are using it to sentence people to death and it's dangerous."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
No, it just means you won't be MURDERED; this is talking about FOOD AND WATER ONLY, extraordinary life support.
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Before a JUDGE granted her husband (living with and fathering children with a stand-in) the right to let her die(from dehydration/starvation).
Doesn’t a single soul at ABC see how screwed up they are?
I can understand her concerns if the case is something that requires a quick emergency treatment, and people may not have choices. In cases like this, however, people have a wide range of choices whether they want to be treated by Catholic (or any religious) hospital, or by other hospital. If they choose to be treated in a religious hospital, then they have to accept the way they will be treated.
Sounds like living with my second wife or owning catz. If I'm in that condition, I approve with-holding everything but the Jack and Demerol(tm) IV. I'll probably last for years on that diet.
Life is precious. For every creature that isn't me, I'll vault electrified barbed wire to ensure they get what they want.
The good part is that my kids love me dearly, and know that I have excellent death benefits. They will weep sincerely, and step on the plug efficiently. Gotta train kids right. ;)
/johnny
The man does not communicate using a computer. An assistant holds one of his splinted fingers, poised over a keyboard, and when she think she feels his muscle twitch, she presses the key (see photo). This is known as facilitated communication, and it is a "technique," once used with severely autistic children, that has consistently failed in double-blind tests.
There is continuing dispute whether the man is sentient (ie, can think), and further studies are needed, probably more sophisticated functional MRI studies.
Our first Hospitals were instituted not by government, but by Churches - funded by the community/congregation. They operated as non-profits, treated the poor and were open to anyone needing medical care.
These pioneering Hospitals and physicians were appreciated and respected. It is clear that the sponsoring Church was always and remains the guiding force for ethics and practice in religious affiliated hospitals
An educated public should have this basic knowlege before seeking medical care in such a facility.
Has a brain scan of this man been released to the public? I was struck by how the poor Sciavo woman’s brain looked like a lot of it was completely missing. At the time my husband had Alzheimer’s, and I had seen his brain scans which had a lot more content, even though he could barely speak, and could only remember for 10 seconds at a time. He died about 6 months later.
Just to be clear: I'm not arguing whether poor Rom Houben is or isn't in a coma or a PVS or is a sentient (to some degree) human being. I'm just pointing out that faciliated communication has been called a hoax.
If, as the news reports imply, Houben can identify the letters of the alphabet, then it would be easy enough to run a functional MRI test: place Houben in the scanner with an alphabet poster above his head. A lab technician could then say: look at the letter "b" ... look at the letter "q"... etc. If the fMRI documents that the correct parts of the brain are lighting up, then the answer is clear.
PS: I'm like you. I have a personal interest in this since my father suffered a catastrophic and ultimately fatal cerebral hemorrhage. After a few days hanging around the Neuro-ICU, you get used to looking at scans and images.
Reflecting on Mrs. Schiavo: if she was truly in what could be called a "persistent (or permanent) vegetative state," she should still not have been starved to death. Even severe disability does not diminish a person's human status, their human rights, including the right not to be denied basic care and killed by starvation/dehydration on the orders of their next of kin.
Secondly, PVS is a clinical diagnosis, not something that can be determined by CT scan. And yet in Mrs. Schiavo's there was no such certain or uncontradicted diagnosis: on the contrary, people with a hands-on relationship with her, including her parents and various nurses and LPN's, found (at various times after her brain injury) that she was able to enjoy jello, sunlight on her skin, lotion-rubs, favorite music, the presence of loved ones, etc.
And this sort of observation is not at all unheard-of, even with people whose brains appear to be dramatically deteriorated. There's much about human awareness and interaction that is --- at this point in our knowledge--- inexplicable: as these videos of Mrs. Schiavo's responsiveness demonstrate.
Bottom line: medically helpless people should still be the focus of care and love. The question here may not be their humanity, but ours.
Talk about language bias. There's no "force" in merely maintaining nutrition via a gastric tube. It's low-tech and not even particularly expensive: the liquid nutrient stuff costs about the same as having 3 meals a day at the low end of the McDonald's menu.
"Force feeding," properly so called, involves physically overpowering a resisting person, a rather tortuous process, such as the British woman suffragists were subjected to in prison 100 years ago.
AP's use of this term to describe basic medical nutrition care involves pretty clear semantic distortion.
The MSM is truly beyond hope!
It’s a hoax. “They” told us so. Just like “they” told us that Terri Schiavo could be starved if her husband wanted to starve her.
From my email from Terri’s foundation:
“Today, Terri would have been 46 years of age and there is not a day that goes by that we don’t think of her. It is because of Terri’s needless and inhuman death that we established the foundation in her honor to protect others like her.
With the emails, phone calls and letters we receive on a daily basis, it is apparent to us that Terri is continuing to have an indelible impact on us all. And just as we have been doing since her untimely death, we will remain dedicated to helping all those family’s that are fighting to protect their loved ones.”
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