Posted on 06/01/2006 7:20:27 AM PDT by 8mmMauser
DALLAS A mother fighting to keep her baby on life support, despite a hospital's determination that her efforts would be futile, will get two more weeks to find a facility that will take the 10-month-old. A judge had been set to decide tomorrow whether to grant a temporary injunction to stop Children's Medical Center in Dallas from removing Daniel Wayne Cullen the Second from life support. But attorneys for the boy's mother and the hospital agreed yesterday to extend a temporary restraining order for another two weeks.
Attorney Brian Potts, who represents the boy's mother, Dixie Belcher, said he plans to submit the agreement to a judge today.
The baby has had breathing problems since his premature birth and was hospitalized after suffering from a lack of oxygen when he pulled out a breathing tube. He remains on a ventilator.
(Excerpt) Read more at kten.com ...
It's not a medical "type", it's a economic, ethnic and otherwise vulnerable "type".
I could describe the medical cases for you. Like Sun had dwarfism, Tirhis had lung cancer, etc. Are you not familiar with these cases?
My point is such: This is not about withdrawing futile care and easing patient suffering. It's about money, power, and brute demonstrations of human inequality.
Have you watched the video?
No. I guessed that flashing lights were used.
Yes I watched it. Why?
And you dismiss everything you saw as "reflexive"? The laughter after a joke as merely a coincidence?
Yes, PVS patients laugh but not directly after a joke. You must have some serious delusion going on if you can watch the video and beleive that she wasn't conscious.
Human inequality? I thought the basis was monetary.
So your study is attempting to show that hospitals are reluctant to provide long term care to patients who do not have the ability to pay. Is that correct?
Do you believe this practice to be "unfair"?
Do you think human inequality and money are in no way connected? People who lack money often do not have the resources to fight for their rights.
My study is a comphrensive policy analysis of the intended and unintended consequences of the law. This bill was passed as a measure to prevent individuals from enduring the burden of futile care and marketed as a "merciful". Doctors can "save" patients whose family just doesn't want to let go through an ethics committee hearing removing treatment. So why is it that only poor people have been deemed as recieving "futile care"?
My hypothesis (unstated) is that since the law allows for termination of care due to economic concerns rather than patient characteristics, a disproportionate number of poor Texans will have futility proceedings against them, thus proving that it's not about "futile" care at all, but about the bottom line. The goal of this law was to lower healthcare costs to the state and to hospitals by killing those who can't pay. Period.
I'm willing to be proved wrong. Show me a case where a rich or well-insured individual had an ethics committee remove his/her care out of principal. My research has to be exhaustive so I'm not selective at all in what I report.
You're quite snarky and have an ideology that you're not willing to shake despite your ignorance of this law, its origins, and its true outcomes. So I'm through speaking with you.
With people like you spouting your mixed-up priorities, it's no wonder why Republicans are labeled as heartless.
She could hear? Dr. Cranford stated that she was deaf. Oh, and don't tell me that Terri must have read lips -- she was blind, also.
Do you have the statement of any doctor who says that she wasn't deaf?
"and beleive that she wasn't conscious."
Consciousness is self-awareness. Terri was not conscious, even when she was "awake".
So it's not just my theory! From Texas Right To Life's Elizabeth Graham:
"I was invited to participate in the futility review process at the Houston facility, and it was disgusting and appalling. The attending physician stated that the patient was definitely NOT brain dead, simply brain damaged from a stroke. The paitent is NOT experiencing organ failure, meaning her lungs, heart, kidneys, liver,...everything is working. The patient has a trach collar, but she breathes on her own, and she processes food and hydration appropriately. She is free from infection.
During the meeting, I pointed out that the withdrawal of food and water would effectively starve the patient to death, and the doctors dismissed me as if I did not understand medical science. I am not sure what exactly is scientific about starvation, but the patient's mother agreed and was bewildered at the discussion of withdrawal of treatment including food and water.
Oh yes, did I mention that the patient has NO insurance? The medical folks involved in these cases adamantly avow that financial considerations never enter into the futility decisions; however, I have yet to hear from the family of any patients with good, adequate health insurance. Our Dallas attorney is working on the pediatric case, and the family was granted some additional days because the facility did not follow proper statutory procedure. This patient has only Medicaid."
Your whole hypothesis is that these hospital decisions are based on an ability to pay. If two patients both have the ability to pay and the hospital treats them differently, then you can make your case about "human" inequality.
"The goal of this law was to lower healthcare costs to the state and to hospitals by killing those who can't pay. Period."
Getting a bit hysterical in your description of the law? I think it's a bit more narrowly defined than that. More like "discontinuing artificial life support" which is costing the hospital $2,000 per day.
The hospital is required, by law, to provide free medical care to everyone to stabilize their medical condition. After that, care is provided to those who can pay for it.
You don't agree with that? Do you think medical care should be free to everyone? Or should we have a system whereby health care is provided "to each according to their needs, from each according to their ability to pay"? (Gosh, where did I hear that phrase?)
Then why is she still in a hospital and not at a nursing home? Or at home with her mother? I agree with the doctors -- get her out of there and make room for someone who's sick, for crying out loud.
What is your problem?
Food and water are not artificial life support. If so, how much artificial life support have you had today?
"Mmmmm...That's some good artificial life support I had for lunch."
No, they're not. I never said they were.
Food and water, however, administered by a healthcare professional to a PVS patient via a surgically implanted feeding tube, in the State of Florida, is.
Current Florida law makes no distinction between respirators and other life support and feeding tubes. All can be withdrawn by their guardians or surrogates, or the patients themselves, if they have expressed their wishes orally or in writing.
As a resident of Florida, you can change ... wait a minute. You're not a resident of Florida. What business is it of yours what the citizens of Florida have decided? Why are you nosing around in Florida business? I thought this was a republic where the states decide, not some dictatorship ... or theocracy.
"We run into these things when we examine so-called futile care cases and other threats to the right of life. For instance, they were ready to carve up Haleigh Poutre if she hadn't fooled them and started breathing on her own, taking food, and such. This was a child who'd been battered, even tortured. You'd think she had suffered enough, but in the bureaucrats' eyes, that just made her an unwanted child who was ripe for organ harvest."
Yes. The ones most at risk are the ones in the custody of the state. They know there won't be a caregiver to assume the responsibility, so they proceed to court to get permission to disconnect.
I don't remember in Haleigh's case if this was more an issue of the state not wanting to continue her treatment, or of the doctors not wanting to continue her care.
If my memory serves me correctley, the Schindler family is trying to raise funds to build facilities to care for such people who are most at risk of being euthenized.
That was the same Dr. Cranford speaking to her in the video, asking her to open her eyes. When she did open her eyes wide, Dr. Cranford congratulated her: "Good job! Good job, young lady!"
So much for Terri being deaf.
Yes, and God bless them for it. We have learned to provide care and shelter for battered women and for pregnant women who have no place to go. Now we need to provide loving shelter for elderly, sick and disabled persons whose lives are increasingly put at risk by Death Cult laws. The Schindlers are leading the way in this effort.
Civilization is measured by the way we treated the weakest among us.
It was a murky business, and shocking. It came out when the Massachusetts child protection agency went to court to ask to unplug Haleigh. This was only one week after doctors told them, the agency said, that Haleigh wouldn't get any better. But it came out that Haleigh WAS getting better and that the bureaucrats evidently knew it. They were going to unplug her anyway. (Chances are, then, she was a candidate for organ harvest.)
The only thing that kept Haleigh alive was a lawsuit by her guardian aunt's boyfriend who was in jail accused of taking part in beating the child. If Haleigh was unplugged, his charges would have been elevated to murder.
But even as these events played out, Haleigh started to recover. She made so much progress that the plan to unplug her was quickly withdrawn. She's been moved to a good facility to get therapy, her real mother is there with her, and she has a first-rate attorney watching over her (bless you, Wendy Murphy!).
The story of the abusive guardian aunt has more horrors and plot twists than a bad soap opera. No time for that now, but it has chilling lessons.
Terri was diagnosed PVS. You have not rebutted that with your posts.
That is a problem now a days. I mean people who watch movies and think they are reality. With Terri, you watched a murder.
The feeding tube law was passed long after Terri Schiavo was injured. Therefore, it was not possible for her orally to express an informed wish to have the tube removed; and it is uncontested, of course, that she left no written instructions. Michael Schiavo has admitted several times that it was his own wish, not Terri's: in testimony, on LKL, and most recently in his interview with Keith Olbermann last March 29.
They are spiritual life support as well as physical. Jesus is associated with the Water of Life, and in the Lord's prayer, we ask for our daily bread. The Eucharist is consecrated wine and bread.
The burgeoning Death Cult laws are legalizing the homicide of society's most helpless members, not least by denying them water and sustenance. Your own investigations of the futile care laws reach the same conclusion.
You will not be surprised that the first time Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was pulled, in 2003, Michael ("loving husband") refused even to let her take holy communion. That raised such a stink that he let her have a drop of wine and a speck of bread when he put her to death in 2005. But Judge Greer, without any legal authority whatsoever, forebade anyone from giving her water or food by mouth. He wouldn't even let her have ice chips in her mouth, though that is standard medical practice to ease the patient's agony. Armed men guarded her closely to make sure that nobody gave Terri a drop of water.
Judicial execution by torture.
Dummies, aren't they? You have to wonder if this guy is working a jail someplace : )
Perhaps the quotation you were reaching for is, “From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need” -- Karl Marx. Please note that Marx was talking about ability to produce. The maxim had nothing to do with "ability to pay," a concept mostly trundled out to heap taxes on the rich.
You have to wonder where Dr. Humane Death is working these days. Perhaps he is learning why the Christian message is to overcome death, not to worship it. I pray not. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
"You will not be surprised that the first time Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was pulled, in 2003, Michael ("loving husband") refused even to let her take holy communion."
No, I wasn't surprised-Because I was there. And it was the second time her tube was removed. It was first removed in 2001.
Food and water are natural life support. Not artificial life support.
NOHLGREN (11/10/03): The single most dramatic moment occurred when William Hammesfahr, a Clearwater neurologist picked by the Schindlers, asked Schiavo to open her eyes.
At first, her eyelids barely flutter. She slowly turns her head toward Hammesfahr, gradually opening her eyes. Then her eyebrows lift into an exaggerated arch—the kind of face a cartoonist might draw to show astonishment.
A lay person could easily conclude that she somehow tapped into a latent reservoir of cognition, even if just for a second. Hammesfahr and her parents bubble with excitement.
"Good job!" the doctor exults. "Good job, young lady!"
But she never pulls it off again, or anything remotely like it. For nearly an hour, her parents and the doctor tell her to open her eyes, close her eyes, look this way, look that way—with little apparent response.
Judge Greer counted.
"By the court's count, (Hammesfahr) gave 105 commands to Terri Schiavo and, at his direction, Mrs. Schindler gave an additional six commands," Greer wrote. "He asked her 61 questions and Mrs. Schindler asked her an additional 11 questions. The court saw few actions that could be considered responsive to either those commands or those questions."
Hmmmmm. Dr. Hammesfahr. He's the Nobel Prize nomineee, isn't he? The one Judge Greer called the "self-promoter"? The one who testified in court that he had treated patients worse off than Terri Schiavo yet offered no names, no case studies, no videos and no test results to support his claim?
Terri was deaf. Terri was blind. She could no more comprehend what she was hearing than she could follow a balloon with her eyes. You are either ignorant of the facts of this case or you believe I am. Either way, you're making a mistake.
I fully expect you to now slink away, knowing who you're dealing with. In anticipation of that, I'll say, "Adios".
Well, there is a problem nowadays -- people who don't know the meanings of words and who misapply them in the hopes of getting a reaction.
Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being. A judge ordered the feeding tube removed. Can't get any more lawful than that.
Good catch! Thanks.
Meanwhile, since you were there, any eyewitnesses accounts you could offer would be especially welcome.
That is correct.
"Therefore, it was not possible for her orally to express an informed wish to have the tube removed"
That is also correct. Everyone involved testified under oath, under penally of perjury, in a court of law, and subject to cross examination, that Terri orally expressed her wish before she was injured.
So? What's your point? The law still applies. Did you think it doesn't?
"Michael Schiavo has admitted several times that it was his own wish, not Terri's: in testimony, on LKL, and most recently in his interview with Keith Olbermann last March 29."
No, no, and no.
Certainly not in his court testimony. Judge Greer found that it was Terri's wish, not Michael's. Document your outrageous claim, if you can.
I read the transcript of his March 29th interview with Keith Olbermann. In it, Keith Olbermann asks, "Was there this sense of releasing someone, was there the sense of fulfilling the wish that you have always said she had for those circumstances?"
Now, how does that tranlate into "the wish that Michael had"? What an idiot.
As to the Larry King Live interview, you misread that the same way you miread Michael's testimony and his interview with Keith Olbermann. Earlier in that same Larry King Live interview there was this exchange:
"KING: If she's not in pain and the parents want her to be alive and you're no longer involved, so what? Why not keep her alive?"
"M. SCHIAVO: Because this is what Terri wanted. This is her wish."
So, believe what you will.
I was there in 03 only, but I have friends that were there in 03 and 05.
They're russesjunjee and dandelion. They have plenty to tell!
Some people are evil and antagonistic. When I say some people, I mean robertpaulson. I've stopped addressing him hoping that he'll just sniff me and walk away. Hasn't happened yet.
As to the Larry King Live interview, you misread that the same way you miread Michael's testimony and his interview with Keith Olbermann. Earlier in that same Larry King Live interview there was this exchange:
"KING: If she's not in pain and the parents want her to be alive and you're no longer involved, so what? Why not keep her alive?"
"M. SCHIAVO: Because this is what Terri wanted. This is her wish."
So, believe what you will.
From the same interview:
KING: Do you understand how they feel?
M. SCHIAVO: Yes, I do. But this is not about them, it's about Terri. And I've also said that in court. We didn't know what Terri wanted, but this is what we want...
Your own source in The DAILY HOWLER is a hostile editorial (blog), and the writer is far from expert in the case. TDH warned you, right in the masthead: "Caveat lector." That means, "Let the reader beware." You don't do fact checking in a partisan broadside.
For instance, it says, "What are the two Americas? If you read the Washington Post, you read about a woman who had a heart attack and suffered brain damage in the process..."
This writer and the Washington Post are 100% wrong on that -- a point that could easily have been checked. That in turn gives them a false -- indeed untenable -- view of what happened to Terri in the first place. Terri never suffered a heart attack -- which was known at the ER in 1990. It was, of course, confirmed in the autopsy fifteen years later. Her heart was still fine. Hammesfahr got it right.
Look at the two lines you underscore. The first says, "She never pulls it off [responds] again, or anything remotely like it." The second admits that, yes, she did pull it off again. Judge Greer says he saw at least a "few actions that could be considered responsive..." The two statements you underscored actually contradict each other. Perforce, one of them is wrong.
And look again at the second line you emphasized: "The court saw few actions that could be considered responsive to either those commands or those questions."
"Few"? How many is that, from this person who meticulously "counts"? How many responsive actions did a medically untrained, blind, biased judge see? The fact that he admits to any is remarkable. It is what lawyers call "an admission against interest." Here again, from Greer himself, we hear that Terri did indeed respond to sound. He played the responses down, in keeping with his own persistent bias, but he couldn't deny them.
>> Terri was deaf. Terri was blind. She could no more comprehend what she was hearing than she could follow a balloon with her eyes.
-- Greer admitted she wasn't deaf, and this conforms to heaps of medical records, anecdotal evidence and sworn testimony. You said earlier that Cranford said she was deaf. I don't recall that he did and find it puzzling. Let's check the facts.
-- Her supposed blindness is an open question. It need not be controversial. Hammesfahr and, if I recall, Baden found her to be severely sight-impaired but not blind. The M.E. asserted she was cortically (not optically) blind, which is an untestable opinion. If he was right, the difference can still be explained by extra cortical damage by dehydration. If he was wrong, she wasn't blind.
-- What she could comprehend, you most assuredly do not know, nor does anyone else. Science has no tool to determine that.
>> You are either ignorant of the facts of this case or you believe I am. Either way, you're making a mistake.
I was misinformed on one point, admitted it, and thanked you for the correction. We all make mistakes, and those of who seek the truth must be grateful to those who call errors to our attention. I call attention to your mistakes in the same spirit.
I know, of course, but they should be treated with courtesy and accordingly to the rules of this forum as long as JimRob allows them to be here.
They never seem to realize that they are personal representatives of, and salesmen for, the philosophy they espouse. The more they trash-talk, the more repulsive their view is to all observers.
And a biased judge selected whatever he wished. This is kid stuff. The whole thing was flagrantly dishonest.
In any event, Judge Greer's court is adjourned in the matter. His authority is no more. You routinely base the bulk of your arguments on Greer rulings and on an extremely dubious claim of due process in the case. But that's looking backwards. To cite Greer at this point is to beg all the questions. The question today and for the futre is not how he ruled (which we all know), but did he rule rightly? Most of us here believe that he did not.
In any case, and regardless of any individual's wishes, it is George Greer and his rulings that are in the docket now, in a much more rigorous court -- the court of history. The questions will not go away. The legal fictions and chicanery will melt away. He can't be excused forever.
Two things. One, where's your source(s)? You have yet to provide anything but your biased and incorrect opinion. Perhaps if you provided a source rather than repeating the gossip you hear you wouldn't make these simple "mistakes" to begin with.
Two, is the information contained in this "hostile" editorial incorrect? If so, address it. If not ... well, you know what to do.
"Here again, from Greer himself, we hear that Terri did indeed respond to sound."
He does not! He says he saw "a few actions that could be considered responsive...". A few actions that could be considered responsive. He didn't consider them to be.
177 commands and questions, and there were "a few" actions. That's your proof that she could hear. Get serious.
"Her supposed blindness is an open question."
God, you're funny. Terri's blindness is an open question, but Judge Greer's "blindness" is a fact. I'm done with you. This is like arguing with a child. You have no facts whatsoever -- all you have is rumor, gossip, innuendo, lies, distortions, and character assassinations.
And you don't care! You just vomit these accusations without thinking. It's natural to you.
Get some facts. Comment on your own links for a change. Until then, you add nothing.
"God, you're funny. Terri's blindness is an open question, but Judge Greer's "blindness" is a fact. I'm done with you. This is like arguing with a child. You have no facts whatsoever -- all you have is rumor, gossip, innuendo, lies, distortions, and character assassinations.
And you don't care! You just vomit these accusations without thinking. It's natural to you."
Yep. Evil and antagonistic.
Tell me tomorrow. The death of Al-Zarqawi is enough good news for today.
YOU APPROVE!?!
You're not calling this murder? What if it turns out that he was on life support in that safehouse? What if he was on a feeding tube? Would you still think it's good news?
It looks like our troll omitted that from the evidence. Reminiscent of what Judge Greer did.
No, he went a step further than that. Name me another case that reflects his last ruling.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that the Guardian, Michael Schiavo, shall cause the removal of the nutrition and hydration tube from the Ward, Theresa Marie Schiavo, at 2:00 p.m. on the 15th day of October, 2003.
February 25, 2005
ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that absent a stay from the appellate courts, the guardian, Michael Schiavo, shall cause the removal of nutrition and hydration, from the Ward, THERESA SCHIAVO, at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, March 18, 2005.
If you don't get it, the change in the nutrition and hydration order from Greer included anything oral as well. Some folks call that murder.
I apologize Twit for leading you astray on that video. Your last sentence is still correct however. Here is the REAL Dr. Cranford video that shows him talking to Terri and acknowledging her responses.
Here is where I think she went blind Twit.
"Here now was a person, who for thirteen days had no food or water. She was, as you would expect, very drawn in her appearance as opposed to when I had seen her before. Her eyes were open but they were going from one side to the next, constantly oscillating back and forth, back and forth." - Fr. Frank Pavone
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1640705/posts?page=16#16
Yes, Twit would support Adlof Hitler if he was on a feeding tube. The only person you are trying to fool is yourself at this point.
Investigating this, I came across numerous references to Dr. Cranford doing essentially the same thing in a different video -- with Terri being able to track visually. That is doubtless where the confusion arose. Incidentally, Dr. Hammesfahr criticized Cranford for issuing commands to Terri much too quickly. Brain-damaged patients process information slowly. Cranford didn't give her enough time. For all that, Terri did respond to both audio and visual stimuli from Cranford. Not bad for someone who's blind and deaf
It turns out that other brain specialists studied these videos and offered their professional opinions. I read several of their depositions saying that Terri was responsive and showed some higher mental function, and that she was not PVS. There are many more to read. I think I should quote some of those, but not now.
I'll get to your video shortly. Thanks for posting it.
Sure it meant something, that is why Paulson didn't post it for us : )
Dr. Cranford gives her a voice command, though she can't hear, to follow a light with her eyes. But this woman is blind! Does he think she can hear and SEE? It is batty.
"...You see that, don't you, huh? You do follow that a bit, huh? ... OK, that's good!"
Dambetcha. Adlof was Adolf's lovable and blameless cousin.
I won't know the answer to that until Paulsen sets us straight.
Opps, I forgot to ping you to #298.
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