Keith Devens .com

If Terri Schiavo is "murdered", should those responsible be given the death penalty?

Maybe one day death-row inmates will be "repairable".

You're comparing those with brain damage to death row inmates? How despicable.

Uh, you're not aware that there have been people on death row that had brain damage?

BTW, I wasn't making that comparison. Can't you answer my question without trying to spin it?

How did you not make that comparison?

And, your question is irrelevant. I'm not interested in what happens to Michael Shiavo, I'm interested in what happens to Terri.

So, you're not aware then. My questions are totally relevant.

Maybe I'm misreading it, but doesn't that guy compare Terri with a dog?

What guy?

Living Wills, that's the answer.

Too late for that now though.

so i haven't decided where i am on this issue, but i do have a question (brought on by the daily show, sort of)....what happens when we have terri's situation with someone without health insurance/means to pay for this? are you suggesting we have socialized health care? if not, where do we draw the line? and if it's not about money, then who gets to make the decision?

Good questions, crawford. only $50,000 remains from Schiavo's $1 million malpractice lawsuit. Republicans aren't interested in socialized medicine - they've been trying to cut Medicaid. Since Republicans are screaming for Schiavo to remain alive, who's going to pay for it? What if Schiavo's parents, sibblings, etc. can't?

For the record, sadf is the same person as asdf (he used both a new fake name and a new fake e-mail address). I can only guess that he wanted to distance himself from the person who compared those with brain damage to death row inmates.

Anyway, crawford, it's a tough question, and I'd rather discuss it with you in person next time we hang out than go into detail here. I'm glad you acknowledged that it's slightly off-topic here and that you kept away from politics (ahem). Moving on... I will say that I'm definitely not suggesting socialized health care. It's failed wherever it's been tried, and you often wind up going from a situation where some people can't get medical care they need to where almost nobody can get medical care they need, and people who can afford to go outside the system and pay to get decent care. I just read this on the subject the other day (just thought I'd share the link).

Yeah, so what? I meant to put "asdf". Instead of trying to erroneously put words in my mouth, why not answer questions posed to you? I thought it was only liberals who played these games.

"If he starved his dog, he'd be arrested."

what an awful analogy. if he starved a dog that couldn't eat on its own and had to be on a feeding tube to live, i don't think anyone would make too much a fuss.

Taking your analogy, if the dog couldn't feed itself and the owner wanted to put it to death, it would be given a humane painless death by lethal injection, not a slow agonizing death by starvation. Schiavo is certainly being treated worse than even a dog, which was Catherine's point.

However, the method of feeding is incidental. It's wrong to starve a dog to death, and it's wrong to starve a human to death.

I don't think I'd say starvation is "agonizing".

Is it better to spend $1 million to keep one human from starving, or spend $1 million to keep many many more (third-world) humans from starving?

No sadf/asdf, dying from starvation is agonising. For a start, the acid in your stomach starts to eat through the walls as the body can't replace the mucus membrane anymore. Your body, quite literally, eats itself. And though having your organs dissolve is bad and painful enough, that's nothing compared to the back-breaking convulsions you end up having. We're not talking about severe malnurishment here: this is real starvation. Bad as wasting away through malnourishment is, it's apparently nothing compared to the pain of real starvation.

Well, given Terri's vegetative state, and the delirious/unconscious/comatous states people reach while starving to death, they wouldn't consciously experience most of it.

sadf/asdf, you wrote:

I don't think I'd say starvation is "agonizing".

You were talking about starvation in that, not specifically about Schiavo. In that regard, I corrected something incorrect you stated. And those states are only achieved after undergoing the extremes of pain that starvation causes. People who are starving to death do feel the sulphuric acid buring away their insides, they do feel the beginning of the convulsions.

While I don't believe she'll feel these things as somebody fully or partially cognitive might, it's still not right.

I heard on the news that the doctors had given Terri a morphine drip for the pain.

Morphine can only do so much. It doesn't completely dull pain.

You guys need to give that poor woman and her husband the dignity they deserve, she died 15 years ago …let her die now and get over it

"Give her her dignity... starve her to death!"

"She died 15 years ago". How disgusting.

Save Terri . . . But Cut the Medicare She's On

asdf, stop being a jerk. You're the one making this political.

You don't see any contradiction in Republicans' position as is indicated in that blog? I'm not being a jerk, just pointing things out.

Ironic, It's kind of ironic this poor woman who initially fell ill, because of her obsession with weight loss ultimately was starved to death..

I'm not being a jerk, just pointing things out.

I think it's deplorable to use Terri as a prop to make some political point. That's why I called you a jerk.

Wow, the second time you've replied with a two word slur when people bring up basic, relevant, ideological differences.

Can you not accept that there are basic differences of perspective between you and other people? Things that will not be remedied by argument?

Here, let me enumerate a couple (again, since you've ignored them conveniently in the other thread):
1) Embryo's and brain-dead humans are not people. They are cells. There's also a symmetry about them: one has no consciousness and one has lots its forever. It's not sick or disgusting, it's fact. There is no miracle that at some point will cause it to show up, just like the boogeyman will never be in your closet no matter how many times you open it.

2) People have some right to decide their own lives. The courts have decided that Terry would have wanted the plug pulled--why can't you respect that? They've been given plenty of time, and the decks are not stacked.

Now, if you don't agree with these in principle, then I will consider you 1) a naive, unworldly man and 2) of a strange political bent, but there is little that can be said to convince you in a blog comment.

You seem to completely miss the point of asdf's thread-opening sarcasm. Wtf? For someone with such an extensive blog, your analytical skills seem to be quite poor. You attack asdf's high school education. Did you go to college? Ah, I see. A Calvinist. Like I said, we all get our axioms somewhere.

Dunno why you commented on this thread. For the record, here was your previous comment.

1) Embryo's and brain-dead humans are not people. They are cells. There's also a symmetry about them: one has no consciousness and one has lots its forever. It's not sick or disgusting, it's fact. There is no miracle that at some point will cause it to show up, just like the boogeyman will never be in your closet no matter how many times you open it.

Embryos do have consciousness. Studies have shown that embryos react to stimuli. One's ability to test them is of course limited, but they react to sounds and I heard of a baby who grabbed an amniocentesis needle. Newborns recognise their mother's voices only hours after birth.
I define a living human as a human who has brainwave activity. Brain-dead people, by definition, do not have brainwave activity, but Terri Schiavo was not brain-dead. She was diagnosed as in a persistant vegetative state, which is different. PVS they still have brain-wave activity. I'm not sure if PVS, as defined, actually exists in real people, but in theory, a person in a PVS is unaware of their surroundings, has no thoughts or feelings, but has basic brain functions keeping them alive. But there is so much about the brain we don't know yet, and we can prove someone is aware, but can't prove they aren't. Brain-dead people have no brain-wave activity. They need to be on life support, forcing their heart to beat and lungs to breathe. Even so, their body only functions for a few days before the lack of other organ function kills them. Terri Schiavo survived for decades needing only a feeding tube.

2) People have some right to decide their own lives. The courts have decided that Terry would have wanted the plug pulled--why can't you respect that? They've been given plenty of time, and the decks are not stacked

Firstly, I don't agree that personal choice should be extended to killing yourself. If a nondisabled person tries to kill themselves, people try their best to save them and figure out what went so badly in their life that they decided death would be better.
Secondly, most nondisabled people have no clue what it's like to be disabled. All they know are pity-filled stereotypes. For an example of this, read Slow Dance, one woman's account of how her life changed as a result of two strokes. Part of that change was accepting disability and rejecting the stereotypes about it. I don't know what it's like to be nondisabled, as my disability is congenital, but I know that many people think it's a lot worse than it actually is.

Now, if you don't agree with these in principle, then I will consider you 1) a naive, unworldly man and 2) of a strange political bent, but there is little that can be said to convince you in a blog comment.

I'm not a man, I'm a teenage girl. Firstly, naive and unwordly are relative. I could describe you in those very terms because you seem to have little idea what it's like to be disabled. But I prefer to just think of you as having a different perspective on life and attempt to share my perspective. Secondly, strange is not necessarily a bad thing. I have a strange opinion on many things, simply because not many people agree with me. For example, a lot of people think you can solve poverty by throwing enough money at poor people, others think the problem is that poor people are squandering their money, but I think the problem is our system, designed so that some are always better off than others. In other words, I consider myself a communist, although I don't agree with the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat. In disability issues, my opinion is strange compared to normal people, but very similar to many other disabled people.