Text 10866, 75 rader
Skriven 2005-04-01 17:14:46 av EARL CROASMUN (1:275/311)
     Kommentar till en text av ED CONNELL
Ärende: Re: Bo Gritz
====================
->  EC> If you insist on framing it that way, the analogy should at least be
->  EC> made a little more accurate by saying that the state refused to
->  EC> intervene when she killed herself.

-> No.  The judge ordered her death.

On February 11, 2000, the Florida legal system announced a determination
(based on a lengthy hearing with extensive testimony and presentation of
medical evidence) as to what her expressed intentions were.  Everything
that has transpired in the five years since that ruling has been based
on that finding.  The judge did not order her death.  Michael did not
order her death.  The state supreme court, the federal district court,
the appeals court, the US Supreme Court, none of them ordered her death.
If you want to phrase it in those terms, she ordered her death.  They
were obligated by law to carry out her wish.  You may think that the
judge made an error in assessing the strength of the evidence.  I think
it was a close thing, and had I been the judge I very likely might have
found that the evidence was NOT "clear and convincing."  But the laws of
Florida selected him and gave him that power.  He had no stake in the
case.  He made the call that he felt was proper.  And every appeal of
that decision has been rejected.  There is no reasonable sense in which
one could say that the judge "ordered her death."


-> It is not clear to me that she wanted to die.

After reading the summary of the hearing, I think it was a tough call.
But most of the discussion here in the last two weeks seems premised on
the assumption that the husband wanted her to die and therefore the
judge ordered that she die.  That ignored the most central point of the
whole thing: the determination of HER intent.  Neither Michael nor the
judge had any legal power to remove the tube on their own.  In fact, if
he had stepped down as guardian and turned the role over to her father,
the father would have been legally OBLIGATED to remove the tube just as
Michael was legally obligated to do so.  The whole ugly mess would have
simply been made uglier.

In fact, earlier in all the legal mess, the parents made it clear that
they would want life support kept on even if THEY were convinced that
she wanted it cut off.  I can understand the emotions that would lead
them to want to do that.  But their wishes do not trump HER wishes.

After this rambling, I'll try to be more concise here.  A patient can
make the decision (an adult, healthy, and not under duress at the time
of the decision) that care should be cut off in some specific
hypothetical future situation (brain death, PVS, coma, whatever).  They
can base that decision on their religion, their desire for dignity,
their concerns for relatives, their fear of living on as a live brain
trapped in a dead body, whatever they choose.

If we allow such decisions to be put into effect, there has to be some
way of determining intent.  Courts and legislatures have developed a
specific means of doing so.  If someone wants to complain about the
ruling in the Schiavo case, they should be able to specify what they
thought was wrong had how it should be fixed.

I've seen a lot of complaining in this echo, but only two types of
actual positions for the criticism.  Some posts sound like the poster is
opposed to the very idea of withholding care regardless of the patient's
wishes.  I disagree with that position.  Other posts have suggested that
only WRITTEN wishes should be respected.  Problem is, when you get right
down to it, sometimes testimony of witnesses, with tests of credibility,
ability to cross-examine, and so on, can be more reliable evidence than
a piece of paper that purports to be a contrct or a will.  Apart from
that, it would be unjust to the vast number of people who (like Schiavo
and Cruzan) are young and naive enough to think that they are fifty
years away from needing a living will, as well as to those whose written
wishes are lost, misplaced, or destroyed.

The legal steps were followed to the letter.  Everyone did what they
were supposed to do.  If the outcome was wrong, how could it have been
avoided?  

--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5a
 * Origin: FidoTel & QWK on the Web! www.fidotel.com (1:275/311)