I am saddened by the situation in the courts - Page 2

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WASHINGTON (AFP) - The "persistent vegetative state" that brain-damaged Terri Schiavo has been in for 15 years is as deceptive as it is heartbreaking, according to doctors.

Almost all brain function has disappeared but it can seem as though the victim is reacting, even smiling at people talking to them. "It's common for family members to make the claim that they believe the person is aware and knows they are there," said Bryan Jennett in an interview published Monday in USAToday. Jennett wrote the first clinical description of a vegetative state. She said there are about 10,000 similar cases in the United States. The smiles and tears are simply neurological reflexes, experts say.

Schiavo, 41, has been at the center of growing international attention since her feeding tube was removed on Friday. She was stricken at 27, when her heart stopped, causing irreparable damage to her brain.

Schiavo entered a persistent vegetative state, which is described by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke as "a condition in which individuals have lost cognitive neurological function and awareness of the environment but retain noncognitive function and a preserved sleep-wake cycle."

People with this condition will exhibit spontaneous movements and their eyes may open in response to external stimuli. They may also grimace, cry, laugh and "appear somewhat normal" the institute said. However, the patient cannot speak or obey commands and all higher cerebral powers have been lost.

To determine if a person has entered a persistent vegetative state, neurologists must find a total absence of all signs of consciousness, the conclusion reached by 18 experts who have examined Schiavo.

Her parents, however, hang onto the hope that Schiavo might one day recover, as was the case of a 38-year-old woman, Sarah Scantin, who emerged from a coma after 20 years. However, doctors stress that a patient's brain must be alive to recover from a coma, while much of the brain has died in a vegetative state.

Schiavo's parents have released photos and video clips of Schiavo smiling with wide-open eyes in an attempt to gain support for their bid to keep her alive.

Schiavo's doctors told the Florida Court of Appeals that her heart stoppage was was caused by a sharp drop of potassium in her bloodstream, which was most likely caused by intense dieting.

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An arguement I made elsewhere. fifteen years was almost her whole life seeing she was only 27. That's a long time, you'de think if there was any chance of recovery, it would have occured. As a republican had stated, if it was God's will that she remain alive, she would not require a feeding tube, according to this republican, we were actually going against God's will by keeping her alive. As I explained elsewhere, it's not natural to be kept alive by machine, death is natural. Though many fear death and believe it moral to use machines to keep people alive past their time, it is not immoral to let a person die without a machine to keep them alive.

I would not want to be kept alive, bed ridden, not being able to communicate. I would want to be set free if I were trapped inside such a body. Me and my wife have just filled out living wills so that if such a thing would accure nobody would call us a lier and accuse us of being a murderer for fulfilling each others wishes. Seeing death is a natural cause. The right to die is a no brainer and shouldn't even be challenged.

If you would like to fill out a living will - Go here:

http://www.uslivingwillregistry.com/default.htm

(note that i haven't read any of the responses on this thread before writing this).

i just don't understand why this seems to be such a partisan issue. im normally pretty liberal about things but am at a complete loss here. on one hand you have the media throwing teri's vegetated-looking face all over cable tv(im sure she would have loved that), which makes me sort of blame them for most of the enormous attention this whole thing is getting. i mean, to my understanding, they do this sort of thing in texas all the time (which also baffles me, since bush seems to be all for giving teri back her feeding tube). you don't see these homeless men who can't pay for medical care all over the news, so why now?

all this aside, the only thing we really have to go by that teri would have wanted to die is her husband's word, and even if he is telling the truth about that it is only in regard to some passing comment she made while watching some television show, and neither of them obviously took it seriously enough to put it into writing. and why now, after fifteen years of this, did he suddenly come out with this information that could have put teri out of her misery early on?

so the doctors say her entire frontal cortex has turned to mush from disuse. according to them, this is the center of consiousness, and with it gone it would simply be impossible for her to feel anything. but really, how does anyone know that for absolute certain? apparently her brainstem is still alive, which is responsible for mere reflex action, heartbeat, breathing, waking cycles, etc. but i never knew the brainstem could make a person sit up and move their eyes around and everything she appears to be doing. but, hell, im not a neurologist, so i'm not going to ignorantly pursue this any further. but even if i were a neurologist, would i be so bold as to state with absolute certainty that she can feel no pain? absolutely not. all a neurologist has to go by on this are little markings on a brainscan showing certain parts of the brain that are in use when certain things are being done, like thinking, breathing, being wakefu, etc. but even at that how can you be positive? the brainstem is what is responsible for a person's pulling back of the hand when it touches something hot, so it obviously registers some sort of pain, but again i'm not a neurologist. i guess what i'm trying to get at is that nobody is completely, absolutely sure about any of these metaphysical questions such as the nature of "consciousness," etc, so to quote the staunch conservatives, why not err on the side of life? you take the two possibilities, (a. teri cannot feel anything and therefore it would not make one bit of difference to her whether she lives or dies, or b. teri has some form of consiousness down there somewhere, and letting her starve to death is not only murder, but blatant torture). so with possibility a., letting her live is essentially the same (except for time, energy and money, all of which teri's parents would gladly be willing to provide if her husband would just turn it over to them, divorce teri, and move on with his life) as letting her die. with possibility b., letting her live, even in her vegetative, hypothetically catatonic state, would probably be better than starving her to death. this is just my opinion. if a person is unable to say one way or the other what they want, i say we should err on the side of life (at least over starvation. if there were some other option, such as a dose of heavy morphine, essentially proactively euthanizing her, i may have to rethink this a little). anyway, this whole case just illustrates how little we know about the human brain and life and consciousness and all that philosophical mumbojumbo, and how much we still have to learn.

Well since I posted about Kate Adamson...I did fully expect it to be ignored again!!


Kate Adamson was ALLOWED TO REHAB...SO SHE PULLED OUT OF THE PVS STATE.

TERRI has been not allowed to do so...
why you all ask...

BE smart and read the site below....O and b4 ya do, just so everyone IS PERFECTLY CLEAR, CIVIL COURT CASES ARE NOT EVIDENCIARY COURTS, AND NO MATTER WHAT EVIDENCE IS GIVEN, IT CAN AND HAS BEEN DISMISSED BY THE JUDGE AND JUDGES OF THIS CASE...

But read for yourself...and May God bring light to this issue either to save her life...or give her vindication on earth after
HER MURDER.



http://www.apfn.org/apfn/terri_michael.htm

'But read for yourself...and May God bring light to this issue either to save her life...or give her vindication on earth after HER MURDER.'

What of those others 'murdered' under the same circumstances almost daily? What about the thousands violently murdered every day, just in the US? What about substandard education, hunger, rape, substance abuse, child abuse, kids having kids, environmental issues, the homeless, civil and religious rights, employment, immigration, national security, to name just a few?

Why is so much time, energy, and money used on the plight of just one citizen, particularly in light of the thousands of others who are burdened with a 'vegetative state'? And who, in particular, instigated this case going all the way to congress, where it has no business being, and has made a media circus of the whole affair?

I said this elswher and I'll say it here. Children who CAN feel hunger are not even given a 15 year chance and there parents get to watch them die. Nobody is protesting for them and nobody is sending them food. This is happing mostly in Africa - but you know, their not christian, so who cares right.

Bravo Oklahoma.

But there are children starving right here in the US, and living homeless in the streets.

Whether or not Terri would want to live as she is now can only be answered by Terri. None of us can ever be sure whether or not she would want to die in this state. Although her husband may not be responsible for the medical bills to keep her alive, I believe there is something deeper behind his motives. It would be difficult for anyone to have to see someone in that state, let alone someone who was once a spouse. A person would never truly be free of it. One would feel obligated to remain in that person's life somehow and the loving memories of who that person was would soon fade, being replaced by what he sees of her now, something he may loathe the sight of. He cannot simply walk away because the guilt would be too much to bear. He would be trapped by this guilt for as long as she continued to live. And as for Terri's wishes? I have seen videos of her expressing discomfort when her teeth are being brushed, curious interest when spoken to, and genuine smiles at sound of her mother's voice. It is quite possible that the love of her family gives her great comfort and happiness. No one can say that Terri doesn't want to live because no one knows.

And because no one knows for sure we can never be justified in letting her die, let alone by means of starvation.

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And because no one knows for sure we can never be justified in letting her die, let alone by means of starvation

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Lets just say she is not brain dead. For 15 years now she has been trapped in that body (WHY) without any hope of recovery. Would you like to be in her place. If I was in her place, and I had a mind that could think, I would be thinking - somebody shot me. Though the starvation is cruel, they do drug them up.

Anyways - if it wasn't for a feeding tube she would be dead. So she is being kept alive by unatural means. How can this be the will of God.

And yes - there are starving children in America, as of yet however, I have not heard of any who have starved to death. In this country we have programs to help the hungry, we are very fortunate. If however, the budget that Bush wishes put through does go threw, then we might see children in America starve to death.

But in Africa, for sure, and it has been going on since I was a boy. Harry Chapin wrote a song about it that was never played on the radio, and it will make you cry. Children are starving to death and all that parents can do is watch. Right now, a large contributing factor is the green house effect, not to mention war being the number one cause, isn't it always. It is more important to kill others then to feed our children. God, grant our leaders wisdom, because their retarded.

don't give me that shit--you and i both know that intentionally killing someone and intentionally letting them die are essentially the same thing. the only difference between the two is that the latter is a collective process, which benefits everyone in that no one has to get their hands dirty. and it is backed by this bullshit "god's will" argument that the christians seem so hung-up on. everyone simply looks away and says, "because she can't feed herself her death is a natural process." tell you what. say a lion breaks out of the zoo, finds its way into terri's room and mauls her to death. we'd be in a hell of a problem then because by stopping the lion would be "interfering with nature." i don't believe in things being natural or unnatural. things just happen. terri is sick, and by feeding her we are simply giving her the medical care she needs to survive. by your logic it would be "unnatural" for emphysema victims to be on oxygen, or even for children and the elderly to receive flu shots and hepatitus vaccinations. after all, these things keep a person alive when they "should be dead" or prevent them from getting sick when they "should let nature take its course." is it natural for people to wear clothes or to cut down trees and build houses out of them? this whole "natural vs. unnatural, god's will etc." thing is the dumbest argument i have ever heard.

but other than that, okcitykid, your post made pretty good sense. i do agree that terri probably wouldn't want to live in her situation, and that starving her to death is a cruel way to go about it. i believe in euthanasia for people who are in a great deal of pain and consciously (in a determinedly sane state of mind) state that they want to die. while it may be seen as murder (namely by people who refuse to look at a situation in its entirety and merely say that "taking another person's life is wrong, period) a lethal dose of morphine would be a hell of a lot more pleasant than starving to death. and the result is the same either way, it's just that currently we are euthanizing her passively rather than proactively. however, she didn't give us her consent, and she didn't verbally refuse treatment. i don't think what she "may have said" and in passing more than fifteen years ago applies here. as i said, when it comes right down to it, i think we should err on the side of life. however, i didn't come to this conclusion easily. i hate both options, but at least with keeping her alive (even though she may be suffering) there is sitll the possibility, even if minute, that she could recover. stranger things have happened.

Terri Schiavo passed away in her hospice in florida today. may she rest in piece and may this whole fiasco finally be put to rest.

So sad. My prayers go out to all that are grieving.

May she rest in peace, and those who grieve find solace in the end of her pain.

And may the Gods help us all.

If I had people who loved me very much and would be saddened if I left this world, then yes, I would choose to live in the state that Terri endured for those many years. I remember seeing her smile at the presence of her mother the moment she spoke. I believe she was happy to have the love of her mother before and after her accident, and even now in death.
Once again, none of us can ever know how she felt about her situation. We can only imagine how we ourselves might feel. But it's always possible that we may change our minds and want to continue living, not merely for ourselves, but for our loved ones as well.

Rest in peace, Terri.