Posted on 09/22/2003 9:34:06 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Increasingly across America, the sick and elderly, some with terminal illnesses, are being murdered simply by withholding food and water.
When a new edition of his book "Forced Exit, The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder" was published, author Wesley J. Smith couldn’t have known that America was so far down that slope that Florida courts were ordering the killing, in a most barbaric way, of a disabled but conscious woman.
Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and an attorney and consultant for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, wrote the first version of the book six years ago.
He decided that an update was needed as a result of the increased pressure by advocates of assisted suicide and those backing euthanasia, which they call "mercy killing."
Smith notes that "health care" policies have gone well beyond euthanasia at the request of the sick person. Today doctors and families are taking the life-and-death decision into their own hands and purposely withholding food and water to kill the patient.
Often the intention might be good, such as to save the patient from a terminal disease and pain. But the result, Smith says, is the same: It is an act of murder. Even if the patient consents, euthanasia is a form of suicide.
Already, assisted suicide and euthanasia have been made legal or deemed acceptable in European countries, as well as Australia and South Africa.
The Doctor Decides
In America, he writes, there is now a movement promoting what is known as the "futile care" theory – when a doctor decides on his own that when a patient’s quality of life is not worth living, further medical care would be futile and could be denied.
"Today," Smith writes, "there is a systematic, nationwide attempt by many in the bioethics movement to impose futile care upon the populace through formal hospital protocols that give anonymous ethics committees the power to turn thumbs up or thumbs down to wanted medical treatment deemed ‘inappropriate.’"
Those protocols, he warns, are already designed to "stack the deck" against the patient if the doctor or hospital wants to refuse treatment.
Now a new threat has emerged, dramatized by the horrific case of Theresa Schiavo: the demand that patients deemed no longer worth saving be killed by the inhuman process of "dehydration" – refusing nourishment to conscious, cognitively disabled people who need feeding tubes to stay alive. In other words, condemning them to an excruciatingly painful death by starvation.
The practice has become commonplace in America, Smith told NewsMax.com.
"Dehydration of cognitively disabled patients occurs in all 50 states in the United States of America," Smith explained.
"Quite often it occurs to conscious people who could feel the 10- to 14-day agony that dehydration entails. The only way it gets stopped is if family members disagree on the medical course. Absent family disagreement, this happens as a matter of routine."
When Smith published the new edition of his book, the case of Theresa Schiavo, who collapsed from cardiac arrest in 1990, had only just been brought to his attention. Since then it has become a national cause celebre thanks to a court decree, temporarily stalled by an injunction, ordering that she be put to death by dehydration.
‘When Is That Bitch Gonna Die?’
The case of Terri Schiavo is a classic example of how far America has traveled down the road to legalized euthanasia and officially sanctioned death sentences for the disabled.
Smith reviewed the Schiavo case for NewsMax.com:
"In Florida, in order to dehydrate somebody there has to be a finding that the patient is unconscious, which is what Judge Greer has done in the Schiavo case.
"But if anybody has seen a video of Schiavo available on Terrisfight.com, the video shows they will see that she is no way unconscious. An unconscious person is utterly unreactive – in fact that’s how it’s basically defined in Florida law."
On one video a doctor is shown asking Terri, who has her eyes closed, "Please open your eyes, Terri" – and her eyes flutter and open.
In another video her mother comes over to her bed, leans down and says, "Hi, sweetie, how are you?" and Terri looks over, sees her mom and gets a huge smile on her face.
That, says Smith, is not a mere reflex; "that is recognition of a mother and the enjoyment of being loved. To say that she’s unconscious is unconscionable."
Incredibly, the court has these facts, Smith said.
"And the court has other facts that it is also ignoring. Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband, filed a medical malpractice suit regarding his wife’s injury that caused her to be cognitively disabled. He promised that he would provide her care for the rest of her natural life because she’s not on intensive care or anything of that sort. He brought to the jury a rehabilitation expert with a plan to help Terri get better, but as soon as the money was in the bank, which was $750,000 in a trust fund for Terri," he refused to allow any rehabilitative treatments whatsoever.
"He also got $300,000 more for loss of consortium, and the money went to lawyers," Smith explained.
"Not one day, not one hour, not one minute of rehabilitation time has Terri been given so she could get better. It’s unconscionable.
"This despite that there are doctors testifying under penalty of perjury, not only is Terri not unconscious, but that they believe she could be better. There’s a speech pathologist who has testified most recently under penalty of perjury that he believes that Terri can be weaned from the feeding tube."
Smith said, however, that "as soon as the money was in the bank, Michael put a 'do not resuscitate' order on the chart, realizing back in the early 1990s he would inherit $750,000 if Terri died, and began to refuse medical treatment such as antibiotics for infections and so forth. In 1998, when Terri didn't die he filed a request with Judge Greer to be allowed to remove her feeding tube, and that’s how this whole business started."
In a stunning sworn affidavit, Carla Sauer Iyer, a registered nurse who was employed at Palm Garden of Largo Convalescent Center in Largo, Fla., from April 1995 to July 1996, while Terri Schiavo was a patient there, testified: "Throughout my time at Palm Gardens, Michael Schiavo was focused on Terri's death. Michael would say 'When is she going to die?' 'Has she died yet?' and 'When is that bitch gonna die?'"
Others at Palm Garden also testified similarly in sworn affidavits. All swore that Terri had spoken to them frequently and backed Iyer's recollections.
Zeroing in on Michael Schiavo's possible motives, Smith emphasized that it was important to realize that Michael Schiavo is engaged to be married.
"He has had one baby by his fiancée, she is pregnant with a second child, they live together and want to get married, and the reason they can’t is that Michael's wife is still alive.
"It’s an astonishing statement of insensitivity that a judge would allow this man with incredible conflicts of interest both financial, if any money's left from that trust fund, and personal.
"It’s outrageous," he added, "to [allow him to] have anything to do with how his wife is treated, and yet Judge Greer just ignores these clear conflicts of interest, refuses to allow Terri’s blood family, who want to care for her for the rest of her life and want to give her the therapy that might make her better, to be her guardians, and instead is bound and determined and intent on dehydrating this helpless citizen to death."
Michael Schiavo has accused his in-laws, Bob and Mary Schindler, of trying to control his wife's assets, and "the Schindlers now suggest their son-in-law tried to strangle their daughter the night she collapsed and that's why he has fought so hard to keep her quiet," the Orlando Sentinel reported. Schiavo's attorney has denounced the accusations as "malicious" and "garbage."
In late August Gov. Jeb Bush asked a judge to delay setting a date for removal of the feeding tube so a guardian could be appointed.
The governor's intervention is "crazy," Michael Schiavo said. "This case has been in litigation for five years, and all of a sudden Gov. Bush wants to be involved? This isn't his concern, and he should stay out of it."
'An Extremely Agonizing Death'
In his book, Wesley J. Smith describes the intense suffering imposed on those being starved to death.
"Proponents of dehydration contend that deaths by dehydration are peaceful," Smith wrote.
Noting that "the patients we are discussing are not terminally ill" and that those who are conscious can feel hunger and thirst, Smith quotes Dr. William Burke, a neurologist in St. Louis, who described the agonizing process.
"A conscious person would feel it (dehydration) just as you and I would. They will go into seizures. Their skin cracks, their tongue cracks, their lips crack. They may have nosebleeds because of the drying of the mucous membranes, and heaving and vomiting might ensue because of the drying out of the stomach lining. They feel the pangs of hunger and thirst. Imagine going one day without a glass of water. Death by dehydration takes ten to fourteen days. It is an extremely agonizing death."
The next step, Smith predicts, will be the abandonment of dehydration in favor a much simpler and faster way to kill – death by lethal injection, now popular in prison death chambers.
In his book Smith concludes by asking if we will "take the hard turn down the slippery slope towards a coarsening of our view of the afflicted, the dying, the chronically ill, the disabled, and those in pain or depression, to the point where we feel they have a duty to die and get out of the way?
"Will we choose to love each other, or abandon each other?"
In the case of Terri Schiavo, the authorities have chosen abandonment.
"Marcia Angell, MD, regularly uses her position as Executive Editor of the prestigious NEJM to advance the cause for death-on-request."
I have been reading what this woman has been saying for the last few nights and thinking what a killer she is. Now I know more.
This is the doc who said the Cruzans did us all a favor by beginning the right to die movement.
I haven't seen the videos, but I tend to be somewhat skeptical of video evidence in such cases because there's no way to know what has ended up "on the cutting room floor".
That having been said, however, I find the behavior of those seeking Terri's elimination to be rather interesting. I'm curious, though, how the legalities of divorce would work in a case like this.
If Terri dies while still married to Mr. Schiavo, I think it's pretty clear that her husband inherits all the joint property. What happens if he divorces her first?
Playing devil's advocate here (and I'd welcome people explaining thoroughly why this does not apply) is it possible that Mr. Schiavo and/or his attourney perceives that Terri's family wants to snatch up Terri's portion of Mr. and Mrs. Schiavo's property? It would seem that if Mr. Schiavo were to divorce Terri, then a court would award her half of their combined wealth, and inheritance rules would hand it off to Terri's kin.
There are a number of scenarios I can see here:
He refused that offer.
He also refused to divorce Terri, because he says he is compelled to fulfill her wish to die rather than live in her alleged vegetative state - an opinion medical professionals do not share.
In brief, he wants her dead......while a whole host of medical professionals have sworn in court affidavits to Terri's apparent capability to respond to speech and oral feeding therapy. Not one nickle has been expended for therapy.
You write of things curious in this drama.
I find most dramatic the epiphany of Mr. Schiavo, and members of the Schiavo family about Terri allegedly telling them - and no member of her family - of her desire to forgo prolonging her life through artificial means. The kicker here is the revelation came only after winning the malpractice award.
How much money do you suppose would have been awarded had this devoted husband told the jury of Terri's alleged desire to die if she were ever in what the court has concluded - medical testimony to the contrary notwithstanding - is a vegetative state?
Again, in the realm of things curious, it is remarkable how the death makers in Florida ( the 'system' - as good 'ole Jeb calls it ) do not like the light of day on their moonlight hour (spelled b-a-c-k-r-o-o-m) gravemaking.
From this vantage point, one hell of a cash cow is going to be shut down if the New Jersey legal team has it's way.
My prayer is God will speak through them with such power and authority on the 10th of October, that it will cause the 'system' in the Death 'r Us state to come crashing to the ground as swiftly as a bolt of lightning from the Heavens.
And all will come to praise the glory of His presence in a reborn 'Sunshine' state.
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