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Why is Terri Schiavo news?

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fable
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Post by fable »

[QUOTE=C Elegans]@Fable: It is understandable but very sad that the family choose to believe in in these fantasies. I am not well read into the case, do you think the parents minds are clouded by desperate hope and that they are manipulated by lawyers, or is it something else behind their interpretation?[/quote]

The adult stem cell research will be nowhere near an impact on Terri Schiavo's state in her lifetime even if she lives until she's 85. Growing a cortical tissue from even embryonic stem cells is total science fiction, we actually have no idea how the body grows a brain, and even if this would be possible in 100 years, that brain would be a new brain, not the brain of the brain dead person.

Of course it isn't: the memories are completely gone, whatever made the person that indiividual is completely missing. Even if the brain tissue could ever be regenerated--which as you point out, won't happen for years--they couldn't get back their daughter.
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jopperm2
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Post by jopperm2 »

Am I correct in assuming that she is blind, deaf, and cannot really think?
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ik911
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Post by ik911 »

[QUOTE=Goatsy Malone]Hmm, this is what I think ... [/QUOTE]
That's probably constantly on your mind, eh. Now if you'd be so kind to explain what your problem is?
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Post by Shai Hulud »

Wow, it's my 1st day back and I get a welcoming from the big RED eye. Thank you Goatsy Malone, its nice to know you got your head out of there.
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Luis Antonio
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Post by Luis Antonio »

[QUOTE=Shai Hulud]Wow, it's my 1st day back and I get a welcoming from the big RED eye. Thank you Goatsy Malone, its nice to know you got your head out of there.[/QUOTE]

Red eye... LMAO!
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VonDondu
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Post by VonDondu »

Here is a great column that appeared in the St. Petersburg Times that sums up this whole sordid affair. A "living will" or a "physician's directive" tells people what you want them to do if you ever become ill and can no longer express your wishes. Unfortunately, Terri Schiavo didn't have a living will. All of the fighting and all of the agonizing and all of the hand-wringing make it abundantly clear that you should create a living will while you still can. Here's what Robert Friedman wants if he ever ends up in a condition like Terri Schiavo's:


Living will is the best revenge
By ROBERT FRIEDMAN, Perspective Editor
St. Petersburg Times
Published March 27, 2005

Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says:

* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.

* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.

* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.

* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.

* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.

* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.

* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.

* I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Bobby," as if they had known me since childhood.

* I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.

* Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.

* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.

* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.

* I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.

* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best "to err on the side of life."

* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.

* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue.


© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved
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fable
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Post by fable »

I love it. Very nice. :D
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Magrus
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Post by Magrus »

Oh, thats wonderful, I'm sober and it made me giggle like a little girl. :o :D

This writer sounds like he has an outlook on politics and a sense of humor like mine. Thank you for sharing the article. ;)
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Post by Macleod1701 »

The whole deal with this poor woman is disgusting. If it was me in that state I would want to die too, I can understand the family wanting her to go on as I'm sure no parent wants to outlive their child but to live in that condition is no life at all. All these religious groups that have jumped on the 'Let her live' bandwagon should be disgusted with themselves for turning a private affair into a political/religious lever that they can use, the US government should sod off too, let the family sort it out themselves!
I'm so disgusted with this series of events I can barely put it into words without ranting and swearing.
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Galuf the Dwarf
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Post by Galuf the Dwarf »

Well, she's dead now, so SOME of the controversy (if not all of it) should die down, no?

The article's here.
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