Redstate

the condition that the Court determined by clear and convincing evidence that she was in.  Yes, the autopsy doesn't say she was in a PVS, but only that is a diagnosis that cannot be determined in an autopsy.

The question is, and always has been, in this case, is there a meaningful clinical distinction between PVS and brain death.  If you strip away the hysteria and admit that Terri Schiavo was in PVS, that becomes the operative question, whether she died fourteen years ago or two months ago?

If there was no meaningful difference, there wouldn't be two separate terms meaning two separate things.

is so monstrous.  Humanity is at least correlated with function at some level.  There is no humanity after death.  There is no function after death.

Would you claim that the loss of humanity following death is indepenent or causal to loss of function following death?  

Those claiming vindication for their advocacy of Schiavo's killing by virtue of this autopsy must ipso facto accept one of several monstrous premises: either that humanity is not something intrinsic, but dependent upon function; or that humanity's intrinsic nature is irrelevant as it is not worth preserving per se; or that humanity is worth preserving per se, but not so worth preserving as to grant its existence the benefit of the doubt in doubtful cases.

Nice false dichotomy. You misstate the other side's position in the first half. No one says it's dependent on current functionality - it's dependent on still having the base minimum hardware so that there might possibly one day be functionality.  There is a difference, regardless of how much you wish for ideological purposes to pretend there isn't.

And in the other half of the dichotomy you misstate the facts - at least implicitly - by implying that this was a doubtful case.  We do grant it's existence the benefit of doubt in doubtful cases. This wasn't one.  Not even close.

It matters not a whit how many Dr. Frist's were willing for political purposes to make remote diagnoses based on TV.  And even though this wasn't a doubtful case, the benefit of the doubt was given here and played out in years of thoughful deliberation in courts all up and down the judicial ladder. They all came to the correct conclusion. A conclusion that - much as you may wish for idealogical purposes to deny it - was (further) vindicated by the FACTS today.

Nice try though. Points for effort.

that the "benefit of the doubt" in question pertains to potential for recovery.

I think the benefit of the doubt in this case refers to the wishes of the patient to live under a vegetative state. In the absence of legal documentation, and in the presence of a dispute between legitimately concerned family members, they should have erred on the side of life, and in favor of the parents. That's my take.

If not, why not?

I think this is correct.  I disagree that it is somehow monstrous to posit that in order for life to have a moral relevance, there must be some potential for human functioning.  She was brain dead and could no longer think or act in any relevant human way; she did not even have the potential to at any future point.  Keeping her breathing was an act of unwillingness to let their daughter fully die by the parents, not the preservation of a full human.

You do not account for the court's conclusion that there was clear and convincing evidence to believe that Ms. Schiavo would not have wished to remain alive under circumstances she later founder herself in.  This is an issue not about humanity, but rather about respecting individual autonomy and choice.  Until you incorporate Ms. Schiavo's judicially established wishes, your premises are flawed.

No matter what you think of the sentiment, this is a well reasoned reply.  Possibly too argumentative, but not even near trolldom, and not deserving of a troll style rating.

Compensatory 5 dispatched.

Death is not an endpoint on a loss-of-function continuum -- fingernails grow after death, for example -- but a discrete state in itself.  I wouldn't characterize it as being what it is simply because it's the ultimate state at which the person does "nothing."

Why only this much brain function lost? Why not, say, deep mental impairment? A human only capable, by brain damage, of reasoning at the level of a particularly stupid cat (and that's stupid indeed)? That person will never reason as a human again. Is it ok to off them then?

"Keeping her breathing"

She wasn't on a ventilator, the only thing she needed was a food/water tube.

The flesh recedes.

No one says it's dependent on current functionality....

Not only is this factually incorrect -- many did do just that -- you then go on to argue that there was no "current functionality."  QED, eh?

As for your assertion that this was an indisputable case, reasonable people disagree.  Your willingness to dismiss those doubts (because the highest medical and scientific authority is, of course, Judge Greer) is nicely illustrative of the monstrousness on exhibit in this sad affair.

This is information which should be been available while she was alive, but her legal guardian did not want to take the chance that things may not be this way.  She was killed first, then it was determined if she could have been rehabilitated.   Had the tests turned out the other way, or even proven inconclusive, this would have been doubly tragic.

As it stands, Terri Schindler-Schiavo was killed inhumanely and for the wrong reasons.  That it took the hindsight of an autopsy to determine her actual condition is doubly sick.

clinical difference but is there a meaningful existential difference?

A brain-dead person has ceased all brain function yet can sometimes be kept "alive" with respirators and other mechanical devices.

Someone in PVS, like Terri Schiavo, has ceased all higher brain function, and her body is running at a purely a reactive level.  Her body was not even operating at a level that would correspond with the most primitive animals.  All her brain was doing little more than operating her heart and lungs and and some primitive reflexes.  If there is a separate soul, was it even in the body?

Nor would I keep them in a hospital bed and visit them everyday.  You can have a basic respect for the dead without believing they still possess personhood  or a speical status of humanity.

There is no right to suicide, and "choice" is not a prime moral value.

Just flesh at that point. Why not use them as meat?

In this case their was no disagreement (except politically motivated).  All of the doctors who actually examined Sciavo IN PERSON claimed she was in a persistent vegetative state (except, I think, 1 that was paid by the parents).  I respect Sen. Frist's medical credentials as much as anyone, but no one can seriously think he believed his diagnosis of her considering it was on video and he did not practice that sort of medicine.

as a poster, I've read it for a while, but only recently signed up.  How do you rate comments?  I ask because I saw the post about the "compensatory 5" or whatever.

You have the reputable medical opinions, the court decisions, now the autopsy.  What more proof do you need that Terri Schiavo was in PVS.  She was blind.  That videotape of her following the ballon with her eyes, that so many people based their belief in her conciousness, was nothing more than wishful thinking.

Can you at least admit that the diagnosis of PVS was correct and start the discussion from that, by now, indisputable, fact?

A basic respect for the dead, (coupled with the fact that there's a very nice Burger King about a block from my apartment) means that I choose not to eat dead humans.  If a situation ("Alive") dictated I had to, then I would without regret.  But certainly you can have respect for something inanimate, and hold some inanimate things in higher value than others?

Where I'm going with this is simple: Either your respect for inanimate lumps of tissue is based on some underlying rationale, or unfounded superstition. Which?

Because we had a large influx of leftist users who would uprate each others comments and downrate conservative views, we turned them off for a while.  Our solution now is to give certain people comment rating ability once we see they are part of the Republican community.  We are pretty liberal (haha) in giving out that ability as long as one is not a troll or on the left.  After we see a few comments by a person who seems to fit the bill we activate the ability.  We do, of course, reserve the right to deactivate that ability.

Hope that helps.

What is your basis for saying there is no right to suicide.  You believe the government should be able to intervene in this sort of instance and, if so, do you also believe there is no right to refuse medical treatment (which is often tantamount to suicide), and, if so, then by your rationale the lack of universal healthcare in this country would be analagous to the commission of genocide by the U.S. government.  This is obviously ridiculous, but it logically follows from the idea that someone cannot choose to die if in a PVS.

"If there was no meaningful difference, there wouldn't be two separate terms meaning two separate things. "

You don't understand medicine, Trevino.  PVS is a clinical diagnosis; pathologists don't do clinical diagnoses.  Hence, her condition on pathological exam was 'consistent with' PVS.  You will never get a pathologist to state is more strongly that that.  Pathologists don't make clinical diagnoses.  Just has cardiologists should not attempt neurological exams.

Suppose one is deeply brain damaged, to the point, as I mentioned in an earlier comment, of being stupid even by lower-order animal terms. Nothing will ever arrest this or alter it. What then?

And you're the one mis-stating, or simply misunderstanding. Or perhaps you've simply missed the point altogether: Your second paragraph is merely a restatement of the position you claim trevino is misidentifying or misrepresenting. Can't have that spoon at both ends, friend.

....to your question is, "We don't know," why the presumption in favor of death?

But thanks for impugning the motives of all who gave her the benefit of the doubt.

....are you arguing with here?  Did you read the post?

As a moderate registered independant who often works for GOP candidates would I be counted as "left" by the moderators of this site.  I.e., is it philosophical/partisan disagreement that discounts you, or are you referring to folks who use the site to pick fights/troll rate/etc.?

But we're always willing to revisit decisions.

"Death is not an endpoint on a loss-of-function continuum"

So Trevino, why do right-to-lifers accept the termination of life by ending mechanical ventilation?

I'm sure you're aware of the case in Texas, where the little kid was killed against the wishes of his mother by State order.  This was done under a law signed by Bush.  

We do, of course, reserve the right to deactivate that ability.

I think I'm not alone in believing that exercising this option is overdue. I further believe RS needs to seriously reconsider how they are handling ratings.

I don't understand medicine.

Well, moving on -- you don't understand the preceding exchange.  So we're even....in the imaginary world where I don't understand medicine.

Wow.

You take trevino's comment that there's no right to suicide and within two sentences manage to accuse him of supporting genocide by the U.S. government.

I don't think I've seen anyone accelerate from zero-to-troll so quickly without using profanity before.

I was just curious, because I very much enjoy the reporting on this site and I would be fairly disappointed if the site were run in quite so monolithic a way.  I do, however, like the fact that the site moderators are actively trying to stimulate reasoned discussion instead of juvenile fighting ("Flame wars").

Let me know which pro-life activists endorsed this monstrosity, and we'll talk.

Oh, you were just invoking it as a vapid rhetorical tactic?  Silly me.

Prior to the withdrawal of food and water, Schiavo was not dead. Absent same, she would, in all probability, not have died in the near term, barring certain unforeseen or unforeseeable circumstances. She was not clinically brain dead, though she was clearly not capable of normal higher brain function.

Thing is, the mental state in which Terri Schiavo existed looked (at least to me) not all that far removed from the mental state of a young baby. Was Schiavo human? Is the baby?

Perhaps a better question: is the baby a person? If the baby is, why would Schiavo not have been? For that matter, what of some autistics?

(FWIW, humanity seems to me to highly contingent on the matter of personality, or identity. Identity is a very fuzzy concept; it's a hard philosophical problem, and not everybody has the same conception of it.)

Not trying to answer for ChiMod, bet there are any number of good reasons not to eat dead humans.

1. It's unhealthy. Extensive cannibalism in society would likely lead to things like Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
   
   
2. Respecting the wishes of the person who used to be there.
   
   
3. It's illegal.
   
   
4. Sentiment.

There wasn't a presumption in favor of death.

The presumption was, in a case defined by the preponderance of medical evidence that she has no higher brain function, that her previously stated wishes and those of her guardian should have some sway.

I try to avoid eating dogs, cats, horses and dolphins as well as people.  My rationale might not be airtight, but I think it's well above superstition.

I'd link each of those animals to some degree of higher intelligence combined with a special sort of relationship with human beings.  Now technically once the animal is dead they lose future potential for both of those things, but the relationship aspect is something that should accord the physical body a degree of respect, even after death.

The value of this respect is fluid-- as I said before, if I were starving on a mountain somewhere it might be a different story.  But respect for the prior human relationship combined with convenience of other foods is probably as close to an answer as I can verbalize.

Why 3?  Why 4?

There's no moral separability between the mechanism and end, here.

Read the full post (This is obviously ridiculous, but...). And please consider your ratings more carefully, in general.

If I choose to stop eating, does the government have the right to force feed me?  

This is the type of thread that they should be turned off on, if that's possible on a thread level.  There are already several marginal troll ratings based on viewpoint, not content.

I did read the full post, thanks.  Perhaps if you hadn't tried to Dowdify what he said it would be clearer: This is obviously ridiculous, but it logically follows from the idea that someone cannot choose to die if in a PVS.

Sure looks to me that he's claiming that even though it's ridiculous it's the logical conclusion from trevino's argument.

And if you have a question on my ratings, feel free to ask - I have no problem explaining them, such as in this case.

It may be your take, but it was not the law.  The law gave decision making authority to her husband.  And despite all the (often untrue) allegations thrown at him, it was he who had the right to make a decision.  Change the law if you have a problem with it but don't throw it out the window in mid-process.

Re: ...either that humanity is not something intrinsic, but dependent upon function

We accept that already when we agree that turning off a respirator on a brain dead person. After all, the person is still human by any definition and is still alive. But said person does not have a functioning brain.

I'm sorry, folks, but I cannot see any difference between Terri Schiavo's condition and her feeding tube and the hypothetical brain dead person on a respirator. Not one argument I've seen here, or elsewhere, has shown me such a difference.

Good point.  I had forgotten about the balloon. Following a balloon would indeed be hard if blind.

all utilitarian arguments, which one could easily imagine being overcome by some stronger utilitarian consideration if circumstances, or the strength of the argument were sufficient.

1. Light snacking wouldn't destroy brains with any rapidity -- and smoking is still legal.
   
   
2. Who cares? They're dead.
   
   
3. Why?
   
   
4. Seems like a silly reason not to enjoy barbecue.

....there's an argument in the post here that addresses precisely your point here.  And refutes it.

wow.  You manage to take a line of deductive reasoning by me that follows based on his comment as well as taking a question and calling it an accusation while completely misrepresenting me in two lines.  I did not say he believed that; I simply pointed out the belief in no right to suicide logically leads to ideas he probably doesn't agree with, so he should flesh out his argument and the philosophic underpinnings to it.

That was ridiculous.

And that's why I generally avoid these threads.  If it wasn't for the comment rating question, I wouldn't have even read these comments.

even after they may have died. Does this make my cats human with all the rights thereof?

4. Sentiment is not a rational thing.  I also refuse to eat dog or cat.  It is not a moral issue for me, it's pure sentiment. I'm sure the sentiment could be overcome in dire enough need, but I see no need to try otherwise.
   
3. A couple of good reasons:
   

          3.1. The health issues mentioned is reason 1.  Public health is a valid area for legislation.

          3.2. To prevent traffic in human flesh and the complications that would cause.

However, those probably aren't why cannibalism actually is illegal.  I believe that it's primarily illegal because people think it's gross and/or morally wrong under their religious beliefs.

but he might not get it if you are that succinct.

Dude, you have no idea how funny it is to see someone tell someone on the cusp of a Masters of Public Health that they don't understand medicine.  You are one funny dude.

Or having some sort of underlying belief system that prevents you from eating sauteed kitty.

Starvation can do some damage after all.

There's a good summary of the argument that potential hardware for future function is a major difference between Schiavo and a baby.  Not to mention that babies, although they might not be able to express themselves yet, do have frontal lobe activity even when still in the womb.  Terri Schiavo was far less capable than any human baby and her future brian activity would only worsen.

Technically her husband didn't make the decision to remove the feeding tube. He was for it, and he petitioned the court for it. however the decision was up to the court system. If he had changed his mind at the 11th hour the court didn't have to go along.

Now, that's probably overly picky. Indeed the court would have never brought up the subject if he hadn't petitioned, and probably would have gone along with him if he changed his mind.

I guess I'm making a distinction without a real differnce.

Re: Prior to the withdrawal of food and water, Schiavo was not dead.

Food and water were NOT withdrawn. A feeding tube was. Her condition was such that she could not ingest food and water orally.

This is exactly the same as turning of a ventilator. Oxygen is not withdrawn (the person is still surrounded by it!) but they have lost the autonomic functions which enable them ingest it. In both cases somatic death is due to the fact that the body has lost, permanently, some autonomic functionality enabling them to perform the regular and necessary functions of a living organism.

Between superstition and sentiment if there is no rational basis for the latter -- indeed, in the former case, there's usually a (twisted) logic at work.

I see, on its face, no reason why the relationship and intelligence a thing had when it was alive matters when the bacteria can run unchecked across its flesh. I have all sorts of reasons, some rational, some not, but what a thing was when it was alive -- working under your framework above -- shouldn't concern us at all if we have rational uses for the tissue.

Which kinda goes to my larger point: If you won't eat those animals or dead people, there must be some reason undergirding that decision. I'm at something of a loss why you'd accord more respect to the flesh of a dead thing than to a living thing with the same brain capacity.

That was based on her brain shrinkage. Brain shrinkage is a result of lack of blood flow. It wouldn't happen that fast.

Minor nit...The coroner said she died of dehydration, not starvation.

We have many problems in this house we call America.  Trevino's post is excellent at drawing academic philosophical lines, but I want to make a pragmatic point that concerns this case in the context of popular politics:

I know a family of expatriates from a country that is very much of interest to people in the United States right now.  They followed the Schiavo case fairly closely through the media, and Trevino's argument notwithstanding, their analysis of the case was exceptionally pragmatic.  Among the members of the family I know, it was the women who were most outspoken that Terri Schiavo had the right to die.  Why?  In their view, because she had lived in that state for so long and no woman would ever want to live that way, for years and years, under that kind of care.  To them it seemed silly and a little repugnant that Americans would argue so much about it -- and they didn't care too much about larger political forces, there wasn't any calculation at work for them in that regard.  They simply didn't understand why anyone would fight so tenaciously to preserve the life of a woman who was obviously incurable.  

In other words, they looked at the situation from the perspective of laypeople (from the Middle East) and as liberated women in America, helping to run a business here, and simply thought:  "I would not want to be in that situation.  I would never wish it on any woman, and she isn't living the life of a woman.  Everyone should back off and let her go."

I'm posting this because not only are these women Iraqi expatriates, they're Christians, and they're 'liberated' women who do not want to be identified in any way, shape, or form with religious extremism.  They avoid it like the proverbial plague, and I believe their assessment was grounded in a pragmatic sympathy for Terri Schiavo herself and a genuine fear of religious and extermism -- separate from all of the other political machinations this case connoted to "real" Americans.

any argument that addressed my poiint at all, let alone refuted it.

Well, at least you're consistent.

I think that is a dangerous power to give the government.

Sorry, I should have said keep her alive, not keeping her breathing though, technically, the feeding tube WAS needed to keep her breathing in the sense that you don't breathe when you are dead.

to pull the plug of Christopher Reeve's ventilator?

and argue that the premise of this post is extremely dubious.

My opposition to the starvation of Terri Schiavo had really to do with the point that ChiMod made just moments ago - potentiality. Did she have the potential to recover? If she did not, why should it be mandatory that her family keep her alive?

I ask this, because in my capacity as a minister, I have within the past year sat with two families who were caring for aged relatives who were being fed by feeding tubes. Both were in their 90s, and were in such constant pain from their various physical ailments that they were spending all their time in a morphine-induced coma. So, they spent literally all their time unconscious and unaware of their surroundings, or in extreme pain.

I sat with these two families as they both made the agonizing decision to pull the feeding tube, and I thought, despite my very strong pro-life leanings, that they both did the right thing. There was absolutely nothing more that could have been done for either of the ladies in question besides prolong the inevitable at the cost of a crippling financial and emotional burden. I believe the families did the right thing. I don't believe that we should require others to use extraordinary medicinal measures to keep a person technically alive indefinitely. This is really just not something that I can sign on for.

Now, in this particular case, I joined in Terri's fight because her parents were willing to care for her, and because I had strong suspicions that therapy could make her better again. If neither of those are true, I fail to see a compelling reason to force a person to remain alive, especially considering that the technology to live up to this supposed moral burden has only been available to the last couple generations of humanity.

Rick Perry.

these things were not so then (or so I remember). At the time the feeding tube was withdrawn, food and water were also withdrawn, and no one was allowed to feed (or attempt to feed) her, or to provide her with water. If she could not swallow, why deny her food and water completely?

I didn't throw the law here or there. Nevertheless, much like the abortion debate, I can certainly theorize as to what would be a better way. A better way would be to err on the side of life. No living will, no die. The commenter I was replying to was talking about a hypothetical erring on the side of caution regarding her potential for future life. That's not the law either unless I am mistaken.

there are instances where people who have trouble swallowing but are still alive

Would you have denied Christopher Reeve a respirator and food/water just because those functions weren't up-to-snuff?

In all my arguments over Terri, I never made her condition my core argument. For me, it was irrelevant because

1)she left no clear instructions

2)she had family willing to render her care

I was (and still am) alarmed at the thought that there should be a "death default" in such a dispute.

If err is to be made, make it for life. Certainly Terri wasn't in any pain, but I guess for some her living constituted an embarrassment.

that someone born in PVS (say a baby with anencephaly) should be kept alive as long as humanly possible.  Because isn't a baby with anencephaly basically in a state of PVS?

I will go to my grave believing that Congress did absolutely the right thing in giving the federal court jurisdiction to grant a de novo hearing to the parents of Terri Schiavo.

The reason has to do with the quality of lawyering provided to the Schindlers by a succession of pro bono buffoons. Had a criminal defendant facing the death penalty been represented this badly, an appeals court would overturn the conviction and send it back for a new trial.

It is a fact that under our legal system, people are out-gunned from an attorney standpoint every day. That happens. It is not, however, normally considered a reason for someone to die.

Neither is 'clear and convincing evidence.' That is not our standard for putting even the worst criminal to death. For such an extreme step, we require proof beyond reasonable doubt. But that is not the standard in Judge Greer's probate court. A human being was killed here because of two findings of fact by a county probate judge acting under the standard of "clear and convincing evidence."

Finding of Fact #1 is that Ms. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. Judge Greer did not have available the autopsy results when he made that decision, nor did the doctors testifying for either side have benefit of any recent or modern tests of brain activity, such a PET or MRI scan. (An MRI scan might have been problematic because of a shunt that had been inserted surgically to deal with bleeding; that would have to have been removed first). Mr. Schiavo would not permit such tests, and so doctors on both sides had to rely on a CAT scan from years before, and such observational evidence as they could obtain.

So basically we have a county probate judge who has no medical expertise himself, deciding to believe this group of doctors instead of that group of doctors, and as soon as he does so it becomes a Fact of Law that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state.

In Judge Greer's defense, it is probably true that the doctors saying "PVS" were probably a better group of doctors, at least on paper, than the ones saying either "not PVS" or "can't say without an MRI." This again is a function of how much money was available to the two sides for expert witnesses. With more money, the Schindlers could almost certainly have produced more and better-credentialed doctors to argue against a diagnosis of PVS.

The second Finding of Fact which must be made before Ms. Schiavo may have her feeding tube removed is that, given she is in this state, what were her wishes concerning whether to be kept alive?

Nobody knows, because she left no written instructions and there is conflicting testimony. Mr. Schiavo says she would not want to be kept alive, her parents say she would. Judge Greer listens to both sides, sees that Mr. Schiavo has a pecuniary interest in the matter, decides that that's OK (which is his right as the judge) and decides to believe the husband. He rules that it is now a Fact of Law that Terri Schiavo does not want to be kept alive in the state which she is in, as a Fact of Law.

To give the lawyers present an early groan as to the sort of thing that was going on here, the judge at one point asks the Schindlers' attorney whether he knows of any precedent that supports the argument he is making. "None that I can think of off the top of my head, Your Honor."

We will now pause for 15 seconds to allow the lawyers in the room to recover.

Yep, that's the kind of slick lawyering the Schindlers were getting from beginning to end in this case.

It is not unreasonable to imagine that a different judge, or even Greer on a different day, might have reached opposite conclusions on either or both of these "facts."

Another judge might have said, "Somebody is going to die here. So if the doctors can't agree on this PVS stuff, let's err on the side of not killing her."

Another judge might have said, "This Schiavo guy got a big bag of money with which to take care of this woman, and every day she's alive that money gets drawn down. Hmmm. I think Ms. Schiavo needs her own attorney to represent her interests in this, not his."

Judge Greer turns out to be a real stickler for rules and procedure, and so despite numerous appeals by the hapless lawyers for the Schindlers, no procedural error could be found which might justify overturning Judge Greer.

This is where the Congress stepped in. The machinery of state government is rolling along inexorably toward killing a human being, a citizen of the United States, as a consequence of a civil lawsuit. This result was produced by two arbitrary findings of fact by a county probate judge, in a trial marked by egregiously bad lawyering on the part of the Schindlers' attorneys.

I applaud the Congress for doing what it did. By all means, let us have at least one other human being take a look at these Findings of Fact before somebody dies here. (Those of you unfamiliar with the court system may believe that this is what appeals courts do. They do not. Appeals rarely re-visit 'findings of fact'. They are about whether the judge erred procedurally, or as a matter of law.)

So the Schindlers get their shot before a federal judge. At last we are going to have a de novo hearing on the facts.

Whoops, wrong. Guess what the Schindler's buffoon lawyer does next? He treats his hearing before Judge Whittemore as an appeal. His plea cites alleged procedural errors by Greer as the basis for his complaint. Whittemore agonizes over this for about 24 hours, finally rendering a verdict that he understood he was supposed to have a de novo hearing here, but he can only rule on the case that Plaintiff brings. This case has already been appealed — literally — to the high heavens, and it is unlikely that Plaintiff can prove a procedual error by Greer, and so the temporary injunction putting the tube back in is denied. Needless to say, the Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court ruled the same way.

All the idiot lawyer had to do was put sufficient doubt in Whittemore's head that he might be able to prove either that (a) Terri Schiavo's wishes are unknown, or that Michael Schiavo has a monetary conflict of interest and should not be Guardian, or (b) the state of Ms. Schiavo's brain cannot be determined without giving her today's standard diagnostic tests, which have not been done.

With either those things, the judge has to grant the preliminary injuction, and we are on our way to a year-long trial on the facts.

But that's not what the idiot lawyer did. And that's how Terri Schiavo died.

but I'm a vegetarian, so maybe my opinion doesn't count :)

I couldn't agree more.  If you allow the government this sort of unfettered power, it is really the end of personal freedom and personal responsibility.

I just wish people would focus on changing the FL law now to what they want it to say rather than arguing over what they wanted it to say a year ago.  

Very good point.  There are thousands of families that must face this decision every year. Most of these cases are not the young women that the media likes to focus on.

Many people find it very scary if such a decision can be taken away from the family.

I think this is a rare moment, but I am in complete agreement with you on this.  I believe this should have stayed a family decision and not made into a media circus like it was.  

Keeping someone technically alive to satisfy yourself, or to try and "fight the good fight" now to make up for past shortcomings is immoral and selfish.  

But I don't think she deserves less consideration than a dead human being, and I'm not sure where you getting the line of reasoning from.

But the CAT scan was sufficient evidence, along with the cognitive tests, of PVS.  In close cases where the physical damage to the brain is not severe, PETs and MRIs are helpful, but in Terri Schiavo's case the brain was so severely damaged the more precise MRI wouldn't have shown anything new.  Her brain was mostly liquified and you didn't need an MRI to see that.

And I don't think living wills have to be complicated or expensive either. There is a system for handling organ donation in place, seems like a PVS contingency or DNR order shouldn't be too hard to manage.

I think if this had been a dispute between a documented "Don't keep me alive in PVS" order and the parents, I would have been on the right to die side.

As it was, I was immensely frustrated for the parents. I have two daughters and I sympathize the position. I also have a sister who is divorcing her lowlife "husband". I can easily see a Schiavo situation where a bad husband lets a good daughter die to get her off his back, against the will of the parents. Legal perhaps, but awful.

Much better to have some type of irrefutable statement from the person in question I think.

You are right though, it is all conjecture now.

And it's still a work in progress.

1. If cannibalism were widespread, CJD or its like would be virtually inevitable (not for a given person, but as a societal problem). It also isn't the only health danger.  All the parasites and microorganisms in a human body find humans to be suitable hosts (of course), so there is a greater health risk than from other meat.  
   
   
2. Most people do, it would seem.  Perhaps it's because if they are seen to respect the wishes of the dead, others are more likely to respect their wishes once they are gone.  Perhaps not.
   
   
3. See my answer to Trevino
   
   
4. Sentiment does not lend itself to rational explanation.  This is, of course, why sentiment should not be the basis for law.
   

Say you were a survivor of a plane crash in the Chilean Andes, and you were required to eat your deceased compatriots to survive.  (You know, that would make a fantastic movie ....)

The eating-dead-people idea is a poor one to try to discredit utilitarism (if that's your goal), for who would argue that it would be better for the living to join the dead than show any disrespect for them.  

I tried to Dowdify a post immediately above mine by omitting the rest of the sentence? I must be slipping.

Yes, he is claiming that a (ridiculous) consequence of Trevino's argument is that the U.S. government is responsible for deaths it could have prevented by mandating universal health care and by not allowing patients to decline treatment.

No, that's actually not the same thing as accusing Trevino of supporting genocide by the U.S. government. Because:

• There is no genocide
• He doesn't suggest Trevino supports it anyway; Trevino might very well feel the U.S. government should be doing more to prevent deaths.

You're over-reacting to an attempted reductio ad absurdum argument and making it needlessly personal.

at east with the idea of telling someone they cannot make a deeply personal (and ultimately scientifically justified) decision?  my guess is that it is because your views are deeply rooted in religious beliefs.  i'm right, aren't i?

and, we should all know, those sorts of religious beliefs have no place in forming government policy...separation of the institutions, right?  why oh why do you feel justified in putting your personal beliefs onto the rest of the nation?  

Maybe I'm mistaken, but the fact that it is not a 1/0 on/off switch indicates to me the ratings can be used for content.

For example, what is the purpose of having a 5 rating. Extra-especially not a troll?

I've been using zero for total troll, a 1 for lying or smearing, a 2 for baiting, and then 3 through 5 for content. Not because I think this is how it is designed, but because it seemed right for me. The existence of the 0-5 indicated to me that it was more than an on-off switch.

But I could be wrong.

Unless you are a medical doctor giving us your personal diagnosis based on your personal reading of the MRI, you are wasting our bandwidth here. We already know that Michael Schiavo hired expert witnesses who testified that Ms. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. However, we also know that it was possible to read the MRI quite differently, and in fact there were qualified medical professionals who did so. One judge, who is not qualified to decide this on the basis of his own expertise, chose to believe these doctors and not those doctors. You cannot tell me that every judge in the world would have come down the same way. There is simply no way to know that.

And the one test of that which might have been run was the de novo hearing mandated by Congress, which was totally blown by the incompetence of the Schindler's attorney.

I think he means based on disagreement instead of quality.  I give out 5s for well-written, original, sourced comments.  4s for any 2 of those 3 criteria.  1s for trolls who aren't cursing or breaking official rules (so people can still see them).  2s for those who are on the edge by being condescending or arrogant for example.

But I don't give a 1 for disagreeing nor a 5 for agreeing.  It is quality, not agreement that drives my ratings.

This brings to mind the famous story of Darius and the death customs of the Greeks and Callations. The Greeks honored their dead by burning them, while the Callations found that horrific. Their custom was to eat their dead as a way of showing respect, which the Greeks found disgusting. Of course, both cultures agreed that honoring the dead was a good thing, but had very different ideas of how that was done that made sense within their respective cultural contexts.

We don't eat the dead because we have a history of not doing so, we're taught that doing so would be desecration, and there's no pressing reason to start. There's a lot of ancient literature, for example, that casts consumption of human flesh as a symbolic act of hatred and the ultimate disrespect, possibly because of a belief that destroying someone's corpse prevents them from entering Heaven, which sounds like something ultimately inherited from the Egyptians.

Accusations are frequently made that those who seek to discard the symbols are secretly conspiring to discard what those symbols represent. Hence the term, 'Culture of Death'. It seems to me that the more fundamental conflict is about the importance of symbols, but also between certain groups that have a vested interest in maintaining control over those symbols and enjoying the power that comes with it.

"Let me know which pro-life activists endorsed this monstrosity, and we'll talk"

Well, Bush signed the law.  If Bush isn't prolife, sorry, my mistake.

1. We eat billions of tons of tons of meat every year. None of this is insurmountable.
   
   
2. That begs the question.
   
   
3. I did. Still begs the question.
   
   
4. Then we should begin investing in human meat processing plants. Any protein shortage worldwide could be cured in short order.

I have to have a degree of agreement to consider it 5 quality. Moulitsas writes well, but I doubt I'd high-five him, if you see what I mean. If someone writes something particularly well that I find very offensive and/or flat disagree with, i will typically just not rate it. I only 3-rate it if others are rating it.

My understanding of the system is that content (or maybe point of view) shouldn't be considered.

The mumber is how well reasoned, how good of content, the post contains.  Or maybe it should be considered levels of trolldom -- low numbers being very troll like, higher numbers mean certified troll free.

Therefore it would be wholly consistent to giving a 5 to a well reasoned post that arrives at what I consider an odious conclusion.

Are accusing their political opponents of secretly desiring a return to cannibalism, and using "culture of death" as a proxy for that accusation, then you've read way too much Joseph Campbell.

Is a debating tactic employed by five-year-olds to infuriate their parents. As I am sick of you, I'll come out and bite.

The root of all morality is unfounded, arbitrary, biologically/socially valuable instinct. As has been stated here previously, cannabilism is regressive--besides being unsanitary, it can encourage murder in inevitable periods of famine, which is contrary to human progress, and removes a mind and a pair of working human hands from the race. That's why we don't do it.

If we actually gained a guy's strength by eating his heart, eating Joe Corpse would become acceptable in no time flat. In practice, we only gain his diseases, so it's not.

Why'd you bring this argument into a Schiavo thread again?

"Well, moving on -- you don't understand the preceding exchange"

You're correct, Trevino, I did misread the preceding exchange.  I apologize.

Would it have made a difference to you if the pathologist had used the term 'brain dead' in his report?

They're going to have fun with you.

Your question actually is a valid one, but I suspect you won't get a reasoned response considering your tone. Note that this is a very contentious thread, but note the tone of the posters who are disagreeing.

In fact, although I could answer you and have answers to give, and although I actually also am a dissenter on this topic, the tone of your comment just doesn't warrant an involved reply.

Try this:

"I have a question. This discussion appears to advocate a policy that would violate the separation of church and state. How do you reconcile that?"

my guess is that it is because your views are deeply rooted in religious beliefs.

Certainly it's not for the reasons explicitly stated, eh?

those sorts of religious beliefs have no place in forming government policy...separation of the institutions, right?

It does not mean what you think it means.

why oh why do you feel justified in putting your personal beliefs onto the rest of the nation?

You vote, yes?  Why do you?

because I agree that there is a slippery slope argument to be made, however, I believe that you missed it here.  With Sciavo, she no longer had her frontal lobe through the area of the whatsit that controls sight.  This is a significant percentage of her brain, including all of the portions that control voluntary functions.  If she still had any degree of voluntary function, then a slippery slope would exist and I would say in that case she should be kept alive.  Being functionally stupid and not being functional are not the same.  Cat-level intelligence still allows voluntary (though not reasoned) functioning.  I think this is a consistent argument, but I would like to know how you would respond to this idea.

but it isn't because their human.

Couldn't have said it better