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Friday, March 18, 2005
Freedom To Die With Dignity
Fuck the GOP leadership in the House:
Employing an "extraordinary congressional" maneuver, House Republican leadership early Friday made a last-ditch effort to keep doctors from removing the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo.
There's no invective I can muster that effectively demonstrates my outrage at these clowns grandstanding and stick their asses where they don't belong. It's an absolutely sad, personal story, but CNN has turned this into a circus and Congress' joining in just makes it that much more painful and ludicrous.
Where were all these members of the "culture of life" when Bush was given the power to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis? Damn them.
Let Terri go. Please.
ntodd
[Update: despite Senate Majority Leader Bill "Kitty Killer" Frist's ghoulish act of issuing a subpoena for Terri to testify before the Health, Education and Labor Committee, her feeding tube has been removed (not for the first time). Peace be with her.]
March 18, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
States Rights and Anti-Federalism: the proud legacy of the Republicans, party of Limited Government and Personal Freedoms...unless you can exploit it for fundraising or to get your guy into office.
Posted by: Mustang Bobby | Mar 18, 2005 9:37:32 AM
Between this and the steroid hearings, they are tackling the issues that affect almost absolutely nobody. At least Dan Burton isn't blowing up watermelons, or if he is, they're keeping it on the down low.
Posted by: norbizness | Mar 18, 2005 10:05:16 AM
Jeezum crap. The poor woman's been brain-dead for years. She doesn't even have the part of her brain anymore that would allow her to have higher brain functions.
Congress should butt the fuck out and shut the fuck up.
Posted by: Scooter | Mar 18, 2005 10:11:27 AM
What possible cause can be served by suffering this poor woman to live?
Posted by: BlakNo1 | Mar 18, 2005 10:56:20 AM
Here is the quote that offended me most:
"'The Committee on Government Reform has initiated an inquiry into the long-term care of incapacitated adults, an issue of growing importance to the federal government and federal healthcare policy,' the statement said."
An inquiry into long-term care, eh? Where the fuck were these self-serving bastards in Congress when my mother was in an Alzheimer's care facility, her conscious connection with the world slowly ebbing, my father's life savings depleting in paying for her care? Where were they? Did they intervene in her behalf, or in behalf of all Alzheimer's sufferers and their families? Where were they then, these sanctimonious... Republicans? (I cannot think of a stronger epithet to apply to them at the moment.) But noooo... there was no political gain to be had, so they fucking ignored the problem. Besides, any change they made might have inconvenienced their buddies in the insurance industry.
We've always suspected that there is no level to which they would not stoop for political purposes. Now we know it for certain. Some days, I wish I believed in a Hell...
Posted by: Steve Bates | Mar 18, 2005 11:10:23 AM
I think part of the blame lies with her family. Granted, I'm sure it is a hard thing to watch a child in this state, but they allowed this freak show to continue on and on.
Posted by: Kat | Mar 18, 2005 11:43:12 AM
Terri is in one of the few Hospice beds in the state and the legal proceedings have taken all of the money in her trust, so Florida Medicaid is paying for the care.
Her parents are being told by "doctors" that she can be helped, even though radiology shows that her brain has been replaced by spinal fluid as it died.
A very sad personal tragedy has been transformed into a circus for ideologues in which everyone loses. Given the track record of some of those involved in this [three murders in Pensacola] violence is very possible.
Posted by: Bryan | Mar 18, 2005 12:03:28 PM
Now hold on, folks.
We're not talking about removing a respirator or some device that's keeping her heart pumping.
What's at issue is whether they continue to feed her. The Florida court has cleared the way to remove her feeding tube. From that point, she'll continue to live as long as her body can hold out without nourishment.
And she's not, as one commentor said, "brain-dead." She's in a "persistent vegetative state." That's different.
The certain result of removing her feeding tube will be that she will starve. Why does the court choose this path and shy away from the more humane option of killing her quickly?
I'm not capable of drawing a clear, reasoned line on why one alternative in this case is moral while another isn't. But starving her seems wrong on a visceral level to me.
Posted by: Quaker in a Basement | Mar 18, 2005 12:15:20 PM
The thing about this case that I struggle with is the fact medical science can now keep you alive when you would have died naturally without it. Not going into the handicapped and disabled who survive with the miracles of science, this allows the Hospice or Medicaid bureaucracy to drain your savings by keeping you bound up in tubes and litigation. We have lost our ability to control the way we leave.
So the action of 'feeding' her is the only thing that keeps her alive, the removal of which will be the only thing that lets her die. The horrible ethical questions now have to be wrestled with have divided her family. How many others are in this netherworld limbo? How many of them have the puffed up Jeb Bush strutting his Christianity and righteous windbagginess by their bedsides? Who cares if the suffering families cannot deal with the costly and indifferent medical legalities?
We now get to ask questions about quality of life, brain function and the refusal to let go. I have no idea what I would do if I was the parent or the spouse of such a case. It's too bad that if you haven't done the proper bureaucratic paperwork, you can get plugged in and never unplugged.
The politics and media blather over this case are sentimental and hysterically religious rather than truly compassionate, disgusting, intrusive, and showboating at its worst.
I'm sure she is delighted to be the spectacle they have made of her in her helpless state.
Posted by: ellroon | Mar 18, 2005 12:47:38 PM
Q-in-a-B, you ask some good questions, but some of your statements are not accurate.
We're not talking about removing a respirator or some device that's keeping her heart pumping. / What's at issue is whether they continue to feed her. The Florida court has cleared the way to remove her feeding tube. From that point, she'll continue to live as long as her body can hold out without nourishment.
And without water. Don't forget water.
And she's not, as one commentor said, "brain-dead." She's in a "persistent vegetative state." That's different.
That's a distinction without a difference in her case. If she no longer has a brain, is she brain-dead? Does the term we use matter more than the fact that she has no experience of the world around her and she's never coming back to that world?
The certain result of removing her feeding tube will be that she will starve. Why does the court choose this path and shy away from the more humane option of killing her quickly?
More likely, her body will die of dehydration, not starvation. Killing her quickly is not a legal option in the United States: the way our murder laws are written, it's the proximate cause of death that counts, and anyone who, say, gave her a lethal injection could in fact be charged with murder. But what is your basis for concluding that this would be more "humane" anyway?
I'm not capable of drawing a clear, reasoned line on why one alternative in this case is moral while another isn't.
One can argue the moral aspects of the conflict within the family. But some family members chose to involve the courts, and the courts have ruled, and other courts have declined to change that ruling.
People who feel free to disobey court orders based on personal convictions scare me. I'm willing to cut the parents some slack; they cannot be expected to react rationally... but then again they are the ones who involved the courts. The judiciary exists to resolve tough questions in a manner we all agree to; the frightening alternative is self-help (and I don't mean that section in a bookstore). As Bryan points out, we've seen self-help applied too often in recent years.
But starving her seems wrong on a visceral level to me.
Again, more likely it's dehydration than starvation. You, and Terri's parents, are certainly entitled to that visceral reaction. My visceral reaction is that Terri died 15 years ago. But visceral reactions are quite rightly not how we decide such matters. See above.
Meanwhile, again as Bryan has pointed out, there are nut-cases out there prepared to murder people, people who are alive beyond dispute, to save the undead. I suppose some people have no sense of irony.
Posted by: Steve Bates | Mar 18, 2005 1:42:12 PM
And now the U.S. Senate has summoned her to testify before them in a ghoulish attempt to keep her alive. These are sick, sick people.
Posted by: Mustang Bobby | Mar 18, 2005 1:56:07 PM
Got to agree with Scooter on one thing: whatever physical state Terry Schiavo's in, the last thing she needs to be is a grand political pawn. Let the doctors and the social workers and the relevant experts on the ground sort out the case, mediate between the parents and spouse and wrangle with the ethics. What business is it of Congress' to impose their will from on high?
Posted by: TheaLogie | Mar 18, 2005 2:02:33 PM
Again, more likely it's dehydration than starvation.
As you put it, a distinction without a difference.
I agree with everything said here about the cynical motives of Congress and the anti-abortion crowd who are making Ms. Schiavo their cat's paw.
It just seems to me that several commenters here and elsewhere seem to be oversimplifying. This case doesn't involve removing artificial life support. It involves a deliberate act to end Ms. Schiavo's life.
Killing her quickly is not a legal option in the United States: the way our murder laws are written,
Of course it is. When I ask why the court shies away from an action like that, I'm asking rhetorically. The court would never allow a family member to inject her with a lethal dose of drugs. So why is this action--which is arguably less humane (can we know for certain that there won't be any suffering?)--allowable?
If Congress really wanted to gum up the works, they'd convict her of treason and sentence her to death. That'd reverse the polarity in the debate.
On a side note, I find the irony in Ms. Schiavo's case absolutely epic. Her current condition is the result of complications of bullemia. Now she and her family are in the national spotlight as they fight over whether to feed her.
Posted by: Quaker in a Basement | Mar 18, 2005 2:23:37 PM
Steve Bates, brain death is a technical term referring to a state in which no brain function is evident. Those in a Persistent Vegetative State have behaviors that (a) show evidence of function of rather "rudimentary" brain parts, (b) look to the uninitiated like evidence that the patient is really in there, and (c) actually do not depend on the presence of those parts of the brain we believe to be responsible for consciousness or reasoning. So the PVS patient has some brain function, just not any that we think is meaningful -- hence the vegetative.
Posted by: tinman | Mar 18, 2005 2:23:40 PM
Killing her quickly is not a legal option in the United States: the way our murder laws are written,
Of course it isn't.
Sorry.
Posted by: Quaker in a Basement | Mar 18, 2005 2:27:11 PM
QIAB: Sorry, but the distinction between death by dehydration and death by starvation is not a distinction without a difference. The average human being can survive perhaps three days at most without water, but can go for a week or more without food.
There is also the fact that a feeding tube constitutes an extreme or emergency lifesaving measure. If that tube hadn't been put in in the first place, Terry Schiavo would have died years ago, since she can't feed herself or even swallow food (or water) that's placed in her mouth. That's what comes of having no higher brain functions--including voluntary movements.
Posted by: Musing Michael | Mar 18, 2005 3:38:28 PM
tinman - actually, I'm aware of both those definitions. I said that it's a distinction without a difference "in her [Schiavo's] case," and I stand by that statement. My point was that it is irrelevant what term we apply to the state of someone who has been unresponsive for 15 years. She's just as dead either way.
Terri Schiavo's parents claim to see responses from her, but frankly, having been around for my own father's last hours in his nonpersistent vegetative state, they are deluding themselves.
Quaker -
SB: Again, more likely it's dehydration than starvation.
Q-in-a-B: As you put it, a distinction without a difference.
You may be right. I don't see it that way, but I admit it's an opinion on my part.
This case doesn't involve removing artificial life support.
A feeding tube doesn't count as artificial? C'mon, now! If she were a conscious entity, I would surely agree that removing her feeding tube against her wishes would be, effectively, murder. But there's no will there to have wishes, and the only info we have on her wishes is her husband's reference to what she said years ago. Terri Schiavo is, by any standard I find reasonable, dead already, and I don't apologize for the word "dead."
Look, I'm not the one to be drawing these lines: I experienced the deaths of both of my parents, each under extremely difficult circumstances (are there ever easy circumstances? probably not), and I have strong opinions. But my point is that in situations in which family members cannot agree, a court is indeed capable of drawing those lines; that's their job. It's not the Florida Governor's job, nor the Legislature's, nor Congress's. The Republicans in power in Florida and Washington are doing everything possible to interfere with the courts, the healthcare personnel and Ms. Schiavo herself, to the extent she can be said to have a self anymore. And they're doing it not out of deeply held beliefs, but for raw political advantage, and to intimidate others who would take control over their own fate under similar circumstances. I unapologetically deplore their actions, and it seems by your words that you do as well.
Posted by: Steve Bates | Mar 18, 2005 4:04:05 PM
Yes its sad how the Christian Fascists have hijacked this woman and used her for their pro-life agenda. Apparently the "culture of life" does not extend to the 50,000+ innocent Iraqis that were killed during the war.
Bill Frist, the doctor of the Senate, made a diagnosis of Terry Schiavo after watching a video tape of her. He remarked: I wanted to know a little bit more about the case itself, so I've had the opportunity to review the initial tapes that were made, the examination, the physical examination on which the case was ultimately based, the facts that she was in a persistent vegetative state...
How would you like your doctor to diagnose you after watching a video tape of you?
This is the same guy who said that AIDS can be transmitted through tears and sweat! Will these idiots ever stop?
Great site by the way. Enjoy reading it everyday.
Posted by: Agitprop | Mar 18, 2005 4:42:13 PM
Quaker in a Basement you aren't alone in your struggles with this, I have posted on other blogs that I have a problem with the concept of starving someone to death as well. I too see some difference, even if it is small, between the removal of ventilators and feeding tubes.
Posted by: Rugo | Mar 18, 2005 5:45:35 PM
Thanks, Steve.
I respect both your opinion and experience on these matters. As I said before, I haven't really found clarity on it myself.
My main observation here relates to "artificial" life support. Let me struggle a little more to try to articulate a distinction.
We're all dependent on food and water. None of us can live long without it. If you or I were deprived of food and water, we'd die.
When a patient is simply unconscious, we provide that person food and water. The ability to feed oneself, or to swallow food by mouth aren't criteria for providiing or withholding food. The person who is fed "artificially" is not immediately dependent on the presence of the feeding tube to sustain life.
When a patient can't breathe independently or can't sustain a heartbeat, "artificial" life support can maintain that function. However, the patient is immediately dependent on that support. The person can't sustain life function independent of that support.
The thing that disturbs me in this case is that the courts are giving authorization to withhold something that we'd provide to almost every patient in any condition. They're withholding food and water to hasten her death. They're actually taking steps to make her die.
As you and I discussed earlier, I don't think any court would authorize any other positive act to hasten her death--not a lethal injection, not a surgical procedure, not depriving her of air. So why is this different?
Now, I understand how irreversible her condition is. I guess I'm just not comfortable that a clear principle with defined boundaries is at work here. Terri Schiavo has a damaged brain. There may be some (but only a few, I'm sure) other patients who have brains even more damaged. There are others who have suffered every possible degree of lesser damage. At what point is the damage so severe that we agree we should take steps to end that life?
Posted by: Quaker in a Basement | Mar 18, 2005 5:48:05 PM
You need oxygen, water, and food to remain alive. Withdraw any of those and a human being will die within minutes, days, or weeks.
A ventilator allows the oxygenation of the blood through artificial means, because because the patient's body is no longer capable of breathing.
A feeding tube allows the artificial hydration and feeding of the body because the patient's body is no longer capable of swallowing.
Breathing and swallowing are basic requirements of life.
In my youth many victims of polio lived for years in "iron lungs" because they had lost their ability to breathe. They had lost that one ability, but could continue life.
In this case, Terri has no awareness. Everything that was "Terri", her memories and skills, died when her heart stopped for an extended period and her brain started to die.
The only difference between shutting off a ventilator and removing a feeding tube, is how long it takes the body to fail completely from the loss of one of those three basic elements: oxygen, water, food.
This isn't easy, but folks, I had a cousin who lived as a lab rat for over a year because a court overruled her living will based on the word of a night nurse's interpretation of an eye movement.
Posted by: Bryan | Mar 18, 2005 6:30:08 PM
Steve Bates, pardon me -- I see now, and agree with most of what you write. While there may not be an ethical difference between coma and PVS for this woman, though, I suspect if she were comatose we would never have heard of her.
The reason her parents hold out such inappropriate hope is that she occasionally looks like she's responding. It's a lot harder to delude yourself regarding prognosis when the person in question doesn't open their eyes or laugh.
I agree with Bryan, as well. I can't see a substantive moral difference between removing a feeding tube (a positive act) and failing to provide more of the liquid food, or between that and turning off a ventilator.
Posted by: tinman | Mar 18, 2005 6:39:12 PM
I too see some difference, even if it is small, between the removal of ventilators and feeding tubes. - Rugo
Rugo, you know how much I respect your opinion; indeed, we seem to agree on well over 90 percent of issues we both write about. I would be grateful if you would expand on the difference you see between removing oxygen and removing food and water.
My dad died when I ordered his oxygen and other life support removed. I did so... God, it was a difficult thing to do... after his doctors assured me that he was truly brain-dead (by anyone's definition), and that he would die when the support was removed. My father had a living will ("advance health care directive," they're called here) and had talked it over with the family years before; he was most emphatic that he did not want to "live" (and I use the word with reservations) in that state. Neither do I. That didn't make it any easier for me; I have most of the details of that day etched permanently in my memory.
Dad was permanently unconscious, and his body was incapable of sustaining his basic life processes without technological intervention... a situation I see as very much like Ms. Schiavo's. Granted, she will require longer to die than Dad did, but I don't see that as a moral issue.
The only real issue here, in my opinion, is Ms. Schiavo's expressed intentions back when she was conscious. The ambiguity about those intentions is caused by her having no document stating her wishes. Believe me, I downloaded current living will forms today, and plan on updating mine right away. So should we all.
The problem with executive and legislative intervention should be obvious; I won't belabor it. But I will say that I do not believe Terri's purported advocates when they claim they have her best interests in mind. They would do the same to me, or to you, if they thought they could get away with it. There is an agenda at work here, and it has nothing to do with anyone's wishes regarding the manner of her or his own demise.
Posted by: Steve Bates | Mar 18, 2005 7:04:10 PM
Oops. Make that "purported advocates among politicians."
Posted by: Steve Bates | Mar 18, 2005 7:09:38 PM
Steve,
First, I hate that this has turned into a three ring circus, no matter our differences it does not value the dignity of anyone's life to turn the end of it into what now amounts to nothing more than grandstanding by politicial groups and politicians with media types feeding off of them as though they were lynches. More importantly even, I am sorry for the pain you went through when your father was removed from life support; I have not had to make that decision and hope I do not have to honestly. I know that in the case of my father, if he were in Terri's condition; he would want to die. Those are his wishes, I am aware of them, and I would honor them. I do still see a difference, and it is in these simple facts that in these circumstances, Terri can breathe on her own, her heart beats on its own, and has for years without a machine doing it for her. As I said I see it as a not necessarily a large difference, because it is obvious that she has no quality of life. Yet, starving to death has horrible immplications in my mind. I watched a friend who had his feeding tube removed when he was dying from AIDS, and it was not a nice death. I cannot honestly say if that is because of the AIDS or the means in which he died, but the two are linked in my mind. We are a sum total of our experiences, these are mine.
Posted by: Rugo | Mar 18, 2005 9:22:59 PM
Buy me stuff off my 
