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Many families are faced with decisions about what to do when their loved ones suffer serious brain injury. When individuals are unlikely to come out of so-called "vegetative states," should we discontinue nourishing them by tube feeding? Is there anything wrong with causing patients in compromised states to die from starvation and dehydration under these circumstances? We all lived through such a decision when Terri Schiavo died in 2005 in Florida. Her death raised disturbing ethical questions that continue to reverberate in society today.
I remember discussing her situation with somebody who remarked, "Well, I wouldn't want to live the way Terri did, with such poor quality of life." My response was, "Nobody would want to live the way she did - yet we all face deficits and disabilities that we have to live with. The bigger question is whether other people should be taking it upon themselves to remove feeding tubes that are effectively nourishing individuals who are compromised or disabled."
Oftentimes people fail to grasp several of the key factors regarding Terri's condition. First, they may mistakenly assume that she was actively dying from something, that she was hanging onto life by a mere thread. But Terri was not dying of any particular disease; she was living with a disability, surrounded by the love of her parents, siblings and friends. She had been living reasonably well with her disability for nearly 15 years, before her estranged husband made the decision to stop feeding her. Terri was an otherwise healthy young person who suffered under the burden of a serious brain injury, which left her unable to do many things on her own. In many ways, she was like a young, helpless child because of her injury. But she was not actively dying from anything..........................
The Modern Anathema Of Living With Brain Damage
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