Text 10177, 92 rader
Skriven 2005-03-23 09:59:52 av John Hull (1:379/1.99)
  Kommentar till text 10157 av Ed Connell (1:379/1.6)
Ärende: Re: Bo Gritz
====================
22 Mar 05 19:57, Ed Connell wrote to John Hull:

 EC> Hey, John.

 EC>>> Hey, RICHARD.

 RJ>>>> By the way, Commander Codpiece, when governator of Texas, sign a
 RJ>>>> law allowing doctors to "pull the plug" without interference 
 RJ>>>> from families, etc. when patients such as Shiavo, are in a 
 RJ>>>> persistent vegatative state.

 RJ>>>> Republicans.  They have no shame, they have no morals, they have
 RJ>>>> no ethics.

 RJ>>>> They are the slugs of the political world.

 EC>>> The issue is not pulling the plug.  She can live and breath as
 EC>>> long as she is fed and given water.  If you, Richard Johnson, 
 EC>>> were to do without food and water, you would die too.

 JH>> I don't pretend to know what mental condition Terri Schiavo is in 
 JH>> at this moment, but one thing I know for sure is the the federal
 JH>> government has absolutely no business getting involved in this 
 JH>> issue.

 EC> That has me puzzled.  I can't say with any certainty about her 
 EC> condition either.  All I know is what I've heard reported.  On the other 
 EC> hand, I can't see why the federal government should not get involved with 
 EC> the killing of a US citizen.

There's more involved here than that.  Almost every judge who has been asked
about this case (they've been all over the tube since this started), has said
that the federal government was wrong to get into it at all.  Must jurists seem
to come down on the side of state's rights and/or doctor/patient privilege.  I
can't disagree with that.

All of the commentators on WLS have been beating this thing to death for the
last 5 days, and the majority of the opinions of the people calling in has been
that the government had no business getting into it.  

 JH>> As more and more information comes out on what has already been 
 JH>> through the cuorts, etc., it seems to me that efforts have already 
 JH>> been made to improve her condition to no avail.  I also have a very 
 JH>> hard time believing that if she is even partially conherent, that 
 JH>> she wants to continue to live trapped in an unresponsive body, 
 JH>> totally dependent on others for everything.  I would not want to 
 JH>> live that way, and I don't know anybody who would.  I have left 
 JH>> instructions so that such a thing can be done to me.  So have both 
 JH>> my parents and my brother.

 EC> That is fine, but it seems a little far fetched to kill someone on 
 EC> the basis of your preferences.

There seems to be a lot of he said/she said going on in this area as well. 
I've heard several reports that the husband expanded a lot of effort in the
first couple of years to try to bring her out of the state she is in, and made
no progress.  That's where the "persistent vegatative state" stuff comes from.

There is also the legal precedent of "giving the bride away" in marriage.  In a
legal sense, the woman is no longer legally obligated to her parents and vice
versa, by virtue of becoming a wife.  That makes the husband the legal guardian
in cases of a tragedy such as this.  This morning on WLS somebody asked why
didn't somebody just file for divorce on behalf of Terri, and a number of
people pointed out that nobody except her husband has the legal standing to
speak for her, and that no court would allow such a filing in the first place.

 JH>> Allowing the feds into this, however, is opening a Pandora's Box 
 JH>> that we will regret, no matter what happens to Terri in the end.

 EC> The Pandora's Box I see is the precident that a spouse can have 
 EC> the other spouse killed on his say-so.

There is also some little controversy on what constitutes a "persistent
vegetative state."  There is one extreme of being in a coma and just laying
there on a respirator, and the other of being in such a state that one reacts
to some stimuli and may even form recognizable words on occassion.  That does
not mean that person is in any sense of the word coherent.  Such responses are
usually due to random firings of brain synapses.  It is extremely doubtful
there is any cognitive thought going on.

As I said before, though, I don't know what her actual state is due to the
flood of media misinformation that has plagued this case.  That said, so far it
seems like most of the legal opinions acted on so far have been based on the
law, and the Congress overstepped its bounds by getting involved.

John 

America:  First, Last, and Always!
Go to www.madgorilla.us for all your Domain Name Services at the lowest rates.

--- Msged/386 TE 05
 * Origin:  (1:379/1.99)