More on Terri Schiavo

[sachi]

Great article: does this portend things to come . . . ?

Charles Dickens captured it when he had Scrooge confront the do-gooders who wanted to save the helpless, deemed worthless to Victorian England.

"If they had rather die they had better do it and decrease the surplus population."[/B]

'... And decrease the surplus population'

Bucks County Courier Times

It's astounding how many people want Terri Schiavo dead and aren't afraid to say so.

I got clobbered by readers who reacted to Tuesday's column about how the "culture of death" has placed its compassionate arms around Terri, the brain-damaged Florida woman who is being starved to death.

E-mail and phone calls (more than 150 at last count) are running 2-1 against me.

"It's nuts, this 'life at all costs' mentality," a caller said.

There was general agreement: Terri should die and starvation ain't so bad.

"Her parents are being very selfish by keeping her alive. Your reference to her starving like the prisoners [at] Dachau and Bergen-Belsen? Oh, come on. She will not be in any pain. She will go gently to sleep. I'm a nurse."

So let's starve death row inmates instead of killing them with lethal injections. I mean, if starvation is so gentle and painless. Ignore the faint-hearted who gripe this is "cruel and unusual" punishment.

"Her brain is mush. There has never been a case of a person being in a [persistent vegetative] state this long and having any kind of recovery. There's not gonna be a recovery. She's 40-some years old. Who's gonna take care of her? Her parents? They're going to die soon themselves."

A 1984 car crash left Terry Wallis of Mountain View, Ark., a quadriplegic. He lay silently in a "persistent vegetative state" for 19 years. Suddenly, in summer 2003, he began talking. He asked for his mother - and for a Pepsi. I spoke with his parents.

Terry Wallis' wife, after swearing she would care for him forever, left him for another man and had kids with the guy. (Sound familiar?)

Custody was given to his parents, who were often depressed. They prayed a lot.

Today, Terry Wallis is determined to walk. His daughter, Amber, 6 weeks old in 1984, is 21 and cares for him.

The most frequent gripe readers have is that I am not a doctor and so should not comment on Terri Schiavo's medical condition.

"Interesting that you put yourself above trained doctors. As a doctor myself, I find this low mentality repugnant. You and Bush spread this dribble for your own good and care nothing about Terri, her wishes or her husband. Have you, Bush and the Republicans gone brain dead? If this is the case I hope someone pulls your plug." - Bill Helton

I received many comments like that. Reading them gave me a headache - oops, I'm not a doctor. I'm not qualified to make that diagnosis. Sorry.

[b]A neurologist from New Jersey sent me this:

"I fear that our culture will push the line further as to who should live and who should die. I fear for the old, the young, the sick and the helpless. I fear becoming one of the helpless. - Maria Choy, M.D.

Me, too. After Terri Schiavo, who will the culture-of-death vultures circle? A hint. Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist whose medical opinion was key to a Florida judge ordering Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed, was on TV this week candidly admitting he doesn't believe Alzheimer's patients have constitutional rights.

So first it's people like Terri, then the Alzheimer's sufferers, then perhaps end-stage cancer victims, and so forth.

Why not? Who would want to live like that? Are they not burdens?

Charles Dickens captured it when he had Scrooge confront the do-gooders who wanted to save the helpless, deemed worthless to Victorian England.

"If they had rather die they had better do it and decrease the surplus population."

Mullane's opinion column appears Sunday

[Ovedya]

"Surplus population"???

[Catsmeow]

Steff, you lack any kind of proof or documentation of Michael Schiavo being offered 10,000,000 bucks to let Terri live. That's pure dribble.

He was offered, according to news reports .... ONE million dollars by a California businessman recently. He would look like an absolute monster and "lose face" if he caved in for money, now wouldn't he?

I'm so sorry any human being could live with himself and condone the murder of an innocent disabled woman.

It won't stop here folks....next it'll be the elderly, crippled, mentally retarded and the infirm.

When social security dries up, they'll cut off the elderly and have them euthanized. Anyone who can't discern where the Schiavo case is leading is dumb, deaf and blind as a bat!

[Cerran]

Cats, when they repealed prohibition people said the same thing, that drukards would line the streets and society would fall. It never happened. That is a typical slippery slope argument and it just doesn't hold water.

This isn't about what other people want, it's about what Terri's wishes were. Read the court documents. The court was asked to decide her wishes on almost a dozen eyewitness testamonies of family and friends.

He was offered, according to news reports .... ONE million dollars by a California businessman recently. He would look like an absolute monster and "lose face" if he caved in for money, now wouldn't he?

And yet people here persist in the lie that he's in it for the money. If he were in it for the money he would have taken offers he recieved from Terri's parents long ago.

[Catsmeow]

He didn't come up with this story until he got his hands on the million dollar settlement and THEN said, "Terry once told me she would'nt want to be kept alive by artificial means."

This is "his word" ..... which is dubious to say the least.

Haven't you heard anything being said? Would you let your own daughter starve and dehydrate to death?

Doesn't anyone have a conscience anymore? Next, it'll be me because I'm sick..or my husband, because he's "up in years".

Sorry, folks...we just revoked our living wills in writing and emphasized we want LIFE!!!!!!!!

Things HAVE changed! Nobody's pulling the plug on us now!

[Catsmeow]

Cats, when they repealed prohibition people said the same thing, that drukards would line the streets and society would fall. It never happened. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Really? You've never worked with the homeless then. I have. I worked in a homeless ministry and the drunks DO line the streets and lay in them. I've seen the effects of alcohol on families and individuals.

You're dead wrong on this one.

[Ovedya]

Okay, let's not get at each other's throats here. I know that many of us are upset at the situation, and many of us just weep for this woman. But let's try to stick together here. We need each other more now than ever.

[Catsmeow]

I'd just be curious to see how this effects people's living wills. My husband and I had living wills made out by our attorney at the time we had our regular wills done.

Now we are revoking our living wills in favor of all effort to sustain and preserve life.

This whole event has changed our position on living wills. We will seek to sustain life at all costs now.

[sachi]

Okay, let's not get at each other's throats here.  I know that many of us are uset at the situation, and many of us just weep for this woman.  But let's try to stick together here.  We need each other more now than ever.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Good point

Given that they have been so adroit in using the legal system to legislate Terri's dying - the question is what needs to happen in terms of legal measures to ensure this is not a recedent that is set for other chronic medical cost inducing conditions like: Alzheimers, terminal cancer, MS etc -

Are there legal or constitutional provisions that need to be set in place ....?

I think - aside from Michael Schiavo's callousness - the stunned disbelief of those us us observing this is is the fact that every legal recourse Terri had was defeated in the courts.

[Cerran]

My wife and I have already put out explicit terms in our living will that we do not want extended life support where the chance of recovery is non-existant, including a feeding tube.

Really? You've never worked with the homeless then. I have. I worked in a homeless ministry and the drunks DO line the streets and lay in them. I've seen the effects of alcohol on families and individuals.

You're dead wrong on this one.

At yet society hasn't fallen and people can and do make responisble choices about drinking Alcohol. It boils down to making good choices or bad ones. If we remove the ability to make good choices or bad ones, we remove the very checks and balances God put in place to motivate us to make good ones.