Since opining on this case seems to be in vogue. Allow me to share my comments from a post in
:If anyone think that Terri’s still sentient enough to have interests…. She’s become a symbol. It’s really an excess, you know? We can throw resources at a problem that isn’t going to get any better. Resources that could better be used elsewhere. I think an issue bigger than the nutrients we’re giving her would be the hospital space and skilled care she’s consuming. I favor something more proactive than simply letting her shell starve. Put it to sleep gently. Waste not. If there is any remainder of her consciousness imprisoned therein, perhaps that would be a greater kindness to her, and perhaps not. But it would certainly be a greater kindness to the person who would be able to use her bed, and to the person who would receive better care from less distracted physicians and nurses.
logcabinguyinla:I think an issue bigger than the nutrients we’re giving her would be the hospital space and skilled care she’s consuming.”
Wow. Now we’re making life and death judgements based on efficiency and use of resources.
Mentally retarded people used to “go away” for reasons like that and now lead happy and useful lives. The nazis used thinking like that to rationalize eliminating people.
This is death as treatment and it’s an abomination.
:Mentally retarded people are capable of feeding themselves if you put food down in front of them. There’s a big difference there. But looking into this, I’ve received conflicting information. I’ve heard “she can laugh and talk” and “she can’t talk” in the same news article. So, I looked a little deeper. According to the [reasonably impartial seeming] source I found, she can’t feed herself, can’t express an opinion on whether or not she’d like to live, and has been in such a state for more than 14 years (going on 15, in fact). The language centers of her brain have been replaced by spinal fluid, along with just about everything but the basic breathing mechanism. She cannot even swallow food without risk of choking to death. (information from: http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html).
We are always making life and death decisions based on efficiency and resource allocation. Food and health care in particular. Unless you happen to think that angioplasty works better on white men than on black women. Rich people live longer because they can afford more/better food and health care. Tell me how that is not a market based life or death decision.
So, yeah, devoting over a decade of medical resources to keeping a literally brainless husk alive, as opposed to using those resources to treat people more likely to recover is indeed a moral issue. Though I cannot point to the specific party or parties harmed, the harm has been done. The opportunity cost matters. Not to mention wasting the judgement faculties of millions of people. Why can’t we trust that the multiple judicial processes actually came to the correct decision?
In her husband’s position, I would have divorced her long ago, and let the parents have their living, breathing lifesized-doll-in-the-shape-of-their-daughter. But I am not her husband, and my overall moral judgement in this case remains the same.
This is just what I heard, so it’s third-hand information at best; but in reponse to you saying that you would’ve divorced her a long time ago:
Apparently, that’s where a bit of a rub comes in. The parents want her part of the husband’s wealth. Since he divorced her, and it technically was not “’til death do us part”, she would be entitled to half of their collective property—which would basically be everything that the owned together. My boss said that the father of Terry wanted that wealth, whatever it may be.
Just stirring the rumor mill a little bit more. I know nothing about the case, other than that if I were just a little bit more motivated and not so entirely sure of my immortality, I would already be drawing up my living will.
I’d try not to attribute greed as a motivation to the parents, perhaps why I didn’t think of it on my own. In that light, I’d agree with what he’s done.
“In her husband’s position, I would have divorced her long ago, and let the parents have their living, breathing lifesized-doll-in-the-shape-of-their-daughter.”
That’s the part that surprises me too. If I liked someone enough to marry them, and I was certain they wouldn’t want to live on like this, then I definitely wouldn’t want to abandon them and let them live on however more years they’ll last. Whether I would be able to continue down this road in the face of growing lawyer bills and over a decade of legal foot-dragging I can’t say. I definitely wouldn’t be divorcing them quickly over a medical condition and annoying in-laws though, and I’m surprised you would.
Of course, to me the only real question is whether the husband or the parents is more accurately able to answer the question of whether she would want to live on like this. The rest is just posturing, though sixpack’s interpretation is definitely new to me and a different type of posturing. If she was able to answer the question herself, this wouldn’t have been an issue. The medical resources spent and opportunity cost aren’t really an issue to me.
“I definitely wouldn’t be divorcing them quickly over a medical condition and annoying in-laws though, and I’m surprised you would.”
See, I don’t see this as “a medical condition” unless you count death as a medical condition. The body is no more her than it will be after it stops breathing. It ceased being her when the brain inside it ceased functioning. I’ve been to funerals, seen the corpses made up to look almost living again, and it has made be profoundly aware that bodies aren’t people. The person is gone, but the flesh remains. The flesh without the person is totally unimportant to me. Live animals matter more to me. They have the ability to act and react, even if their conversational skills are lacking.
I would get the divorce as a bureaucratic exhasperation regarding the absurdity of a legal system that does not recognize the body as already dead.
But that’s the thing – the parents are claiming she isn’t brain-dead. If she isn’t, then effort should be expended to save her.
So many people view this case as a chance to exercise their powers of reasoning and decide whether Terry should live or die. That’s what I find sickening about it. I think it isn’t our place to make that decision, either pro or con. As a nation we’ve jumped into a situation we should’ve left alone. Let the judges work this out, that’s what we have judges for.
People love a courtroom drama, though, especially when doctors are involved, and they usually want to decide for themselves who dunnit and who should live or die. Very few people want to admit that they really don’t have all of the facts and should just butt out.