"In Terry’s case, the evidence is crystal clear, her “life” was no life at all, there was nothing left of the critical parts of her brain where thinking and cognition take place." Quis - you're wrong - she was NOT brain dead - she was interacting with her father just before she died. I saw a video of her laughing with her father - WITH her father, when he was reminding her about something she used to do to tease her mother. She was very much alert, and to slowly starve her because she could not talk is the ultimate atrocity. We have NO right to take another's life, especially if they're just disabled, and in THAT way. You wouldn't even do to a criminal, or even an animal, what they did to Terri. Atrocious and obscene!!! And evil! And, another thing, the parents were willing to care for her at THEIR expense, not the taxpayers'. Her "husband" would not let her go - fought like hell to get her murdered.
Bull. Go read the autopsy. Her frontal cortex was LIQUID. The Brain on the left is a normal human one and the one on the right is Terry's shortly before she died. The Black area is where brain tissue has been replaced with cerebo-spinal fluid
This is why nobody who claimed consciousness for Terry ever were able to show an EEG or CAT scan reading that supported their claim. It's not that they were lying, it's just that what was going on was wishful thinking. Like I've said, I've seen it up close and personal before. The Anacephalic child I observed all those years ago was literally born without a brain.(if you Google picture of the condition you will A) have nightmares for weeks and B) see how obvious it is that there is no brain inside the baby's head) However, she had enough of a brain stem to make her autonomic nervous system work, and occasionally cause twitches and movement that her parent were CONVINCED that it was her attempt to communicate with us and a sign she was going to "wake up" any day now. But that was NEVER going to happen, because it couldn't, and allthe wishing wasn't going to change that. Now, if they had the funds to pay for the millions of dollars a year it took to keep their child alive, more power to them, they have the right to hope and pray all they want and spend their money any way they want. But when its our money, tax money? Sorry but wasting money on a medically hopeless scenario is NOT being fiscally conservative. A line has to be drawn SOMEWHERE. Here's the top three line items in the federal budget: HHS: 1 Trillion Social Secuirty $750 Billion DOD: 600 Billion Here's another fact: 5% of all Medicare recipients account for 50% of the total spending it does every year. There comes a time when we have to ask whether it really is worth it for medicare to cover a $100,000 prostate cancer drug that prolongs lives an average of only 4.1 months longer than the placebo ( http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/medicare-will-pay-for-prostate-cancer-drug/ ) Scientists tell us that ALL men will eventually get Prostate cancer if they live long enough. And everybody has to die of something/ This country is trillions in debt because we are unwilling to make hard choices that previous generations accepted as simple facts of life.