Contact John Grogan at 610-313-8132 or jgrogan@phillynews.com.
Posted on 12/29/2004 7:16:22 AM PST by floriduh voter
REMINDER, WE MUST DO THIS!
DEMAND GRAND JURY
IN SCHIAVO CASE
Florida Attorney General's Office 850-414-3300 Charlie Crist, AG
Bernie McCabe, State Attorney Pinellas and Pasco Counties
727-464-6221
bmccabe@co.pinellas.fl.us
Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities 800-342-0823
850-488-9071
info@advocacycenter.org
Pinellas County GOP 727-539-6009
Gov. Jeb Bush 850-488-4441
jeb.bush@myflorida.com
State of Florida Office of Civil Rights 954-712-4601
Florida Senate 800-342-1827
Florida House of Representatives 850-488-6026
Florida Department of Law Enforcement 850-410-7000
Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities 850-488-4257
Federal Bureau of Investigation
202-324-3000
U.S. Department of Justice
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
202-514-2000 Main Switchboard
202-353-1555 Office of US AG
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Last Acts (ACT again) Last Acts=Partnership for Caring/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Connection
Choice in Dying Choice In Dying
... We are now Partnership for Caring: America's Voices for the Dying. Click
here to get to our new website. www.partnershipforcaring.org:
www.choices.org/ - 2k - Cached - Similar pages
National Hospice Organization check link redirect
Society of Health and Human Values-Society for Bioethics Consultation Task Force
National Consensus Project NCP - Ira Byock Partnership for Caring
Project on Death in America Research and Policy Organization Links
Florida Partnership for End of Life Care Coalition Sites - 21 Florida Sites
*Florida Partnership for End of Life Care Site with Links that Tie Many of the Organizations Together
About Rallying Points (connection Ira Byock (MVQOLI), Midwest Bioethics Center and Last Acts)
From the.... Hospice is for Caring ... or is it for Killing?
How did this situation arise? Hospice chairman of the board at the time, George Felos, is the attorney representing Michael Schiavo's efforts to kill Terri. When Michael Schiavo contacted Felos, George had just the place to kill Terri: his very own hospice! So, he stepped down from the board, temporarily of course, until the legal battle to kill Terri is over. After the legal battle, we're sure good old right-to-kill-patients-advocate George will be right back on the board. George (Felos) is a student of Ira Byock, MD (a well known hospice physician) who advocates adding "aid in dying" (through terminal sedation) to the mix of "services" provided by hospices.
Dr. Ira Byock, long time palliative care physician and advocate for improved end-of-life care, and a past president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, provides written resources and referrals to organizations, web sites and books to empower persons with life threatening illness and their families to live fully.
Felos mentions Byock in some of his early writings.
The following site is long gone (December '03) and will not copy to post:
Transforming the Culture of Dying PDIA
Profiles of PDIA-Funded Researchers and Projects
Exerpt: (located below midpage)
Ira Byock, M.D.
Barbara K. Spring, M.D.
As a hospice physician and medical director, Dr. Ira Byock is only too aware of the difference between a "good" death and a "bad" death, and the fact that the latter far outnumber the former. But instead of working only with the medical profession to reverse this equation, he and gerontologist Dr. Barbara K. Spring set out to engage an entire Montana town in examining the dying process and making it better. The Missoula Demonstration Project: The Quality of Life's End is the most ambitious effort of its kind in the United States. Modeled after a famous long-term heart disease study which collected data on an entire community, the 15-year Missoula Demonstration Project aims not only to improve the quality of life's end in Missoula, but to stimulate other efforts throughout the country. Organized in 1996, and overseen by an international advisory committee, the project is engaged in several studies to understand people's experiences, attitudes, values, customs and concerns about death. By looking at 250 families which experienced a death within a one-year period, for instance, and by gathering data in all health-care settings that treat or care for dying people, researchers hope to create, as Byock puts it, an "intensive, high-definition picture of dying, death and bereavement in Missoula." "Our approach," says Barbara Spring, "is to focus on what people seem to worry about the most-pain, the length of the dying process, isolation, and other things that make them miserable."
Bioethics Groups (Midwest Bioethics Center included)
Rand Center to Improve Care of the Dying
John Grogan | Just what life is being prolonged?
http://www.realcities.com/mld/philly/news/columnists/john_grogan/
By John Grogan
Inquirer Columnist
For Terri Schiavo, there are no happy endings, only degrees of sadness.
Her once-bright life has come down to two heartbreakingly bleak choices: to live, if you can call it that, in what the courts have determined is a "persistent vegetative state." Or to die.
If Schiavo could somehow make her wishes known, I have to believe she would choose the latter - a
peaceful death over a life sentence of endless, unconscious tomorrows.
But the former suburban Philadelphia woman cannot and did not give direction. And thus this anguished national debate.
Schiavo, who grew up in Huntingdon Valley, suffered brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped as a result of an eating disorder. She has been nonresponsive ever since and, unable to swallow, is kept alive in a Florida nursing home with a feeding and hydration tube.
Her condition has left those who love her bitterly divided. Her husband, Michael, formerly of Bucks County, has fought to let his wife die with dignity. He says she made it clear to him she never would want to exist like this, tethered to a machine with no hope of recovery.
Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have fought just as fiercely to keep her alive. They accuse the husband of being driven by greed and a desire to remarry.
A political end-run
The case has wound through the courts and back again. After the judiciary repeatedly sided with the husband, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, and his allies pushed through the state legislature a special bill, "Terri's Law," designed specifically to prevent Michael Schiavo from removing the feeding tube. A life was being used to push political agendas.
The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to overturn a lower court ruling that struck down Terri's Law, but that has not deterred her parents, who vow to keep battling on other fronts.
For Terri, now 41 and blessedly unaware of the ugly and very public family feud her condition has spurred, there is no end in sight. My sense is both sides are driven by pure intentions. Michael Schiavo does not want to see his wife's suffering prolonged.
Her parents cling to hope against all odds, as parents are meant to do. They see glimmers of life behind the blank stares. They believe their daughter still exists in there, just waiting to be freed. Her doctors say otherwise.
The fact that Terri Schiavo left no written instructions greatly complicates the debate. And yet we are not without clues.
Absent a written directive, we have the husband's word. And we have our own common sense and decency. We each can ask ourselves, If it were me, what would I want?
Is there anyone among us who would answer truthfully: "Yes, I would choose to linger for years, decades, in a vegetative state with no hope of ever regaining consciousness?"
Alarmist malarkey
What would a reasonable person want from such a tragic turn of events? The answer seems obvious: Not to be kept lingering in a permanent comatose state, unaware of yourself or your surroundings, with no chance for recovery.
The right-to-life camp has wrapped itself around the Schiavo case, and its members paint alarmist "slippery slope" scenarios that are shameful in their deceit. To hear them spin it, if Terri is allowed to die, then next we will be rounding up and mass euthanizing all whom society does not value - the elderly, the handicapped, the mentally diminished, the homeless.
Pure nonsense.
This wrenching case is not, as Terri's parents claim, about "judicial homicide." The courts are not killing anyone. They are merely attempting to determine Terri Schiavo's chances for a meaningful recovery (none) and what she would want.
This is about honoring a woman's wishes. She did not write down exactly what those wishes are. But we can peer inside our own hearts and know without qualm what Terri Schiavo would want. It would not be the perpetual and pointless purgatory known by that sterile and inadequate term, "persistent vegetative state."
That is no life at all.
Contact John Grogan at 610-313-8132 or jgrogan@phillynews.com.
Florida Attorney General's Office 850-414-3300 Charlie Crist, AG
They told me to call this number:
850-414-3990
I think there maybe another number to call for Florida residents. She asked me if I was a Florida resident.
I asked what the number is and they said there Citizen Services number.
Of course, that number is busy. Hopefully Terri's supporters. I'll try again later.
i'm on hold with them right now
press 3 for english
BTTT
Let's add the Florida Senate to your list:
http://www.flsenate.gov/Legislators/index.cfm?Mode=Member%20Pages&Submenu=1&Tab=legislators
and the Representatives to your call list
http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/legislators.aspx
I want them to repeal the law allowing the starvation of anyone, but if they wont do that to pass a law exempting anyone that was put on a tube for the convenience of the nursing staff to be exempt, or at the least require that there be a real attempt to allow them to learn to be fed orally again.
Someone had an email list of all the reps and senators for mass mailing of comments last time. We need those email lists again.
Terri ping to 2050!
If anyone would like to be added to or removed from my Terri ping list, please let me know by FReepmail!
Terri ping to 2061! Please keep contacting the people and agencies on this post!
If anyone would like to be added to or removed from my Terri ping list, please let me know by FReepmail!
IF YOU'RE FROM FLORIDA, HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP TO SAVE TERRI!
http://www.nrlc.org/euthanasia/Terri/Alert1252005.htm
Contact your Florida state senator and representative to sponsor and support legislation to protect Terri Shindler-Sciavo and those with disabilities like hers from starvation and dehydration.
The Florida Supreme Court threw out Terri's Law 1 because it said it dealt only with her case and therefore violated the separation of powers. But a law that covers not only Terri, but also others in similar situations, COULD be upheld.
A massive outpouring from their constituents is necessary to get Florida legislators to sponsor and support a protective law to save the lives of Terri and others like her. You can get contact information for your state senator and representative on http://www.leg.state.fl.us/ or www.myflorida.com
ACT NOW!
More things that each of us can do to help save Terri Schindler-Schiavo:
1) Pray for Terri, for her family and for those who have dedicated their time and talents to helping her plight.
2) If you have relatives or friends who live in Florida, contact them ASAP and ask them to write or call their legislators.
3) Monitor your local media coverage of Terri’s case to ensure that the press reports her condition accurately. Due to media distortions on Terri’s condition, many people think that Terri Schiavo is in a coma, when in fact, Terri appears alert and aware and she responds to her family. If you come across an inaccuracy, please take the time to call or email the media outlet and ask them to issue a correction.
--Inaccuracies in your local media to respond to:
MYTH: Terri Schiavo is in a coma or in a comatose-state.
FACT: Some claim that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent-vegetative state, while many doctors and medical professional disagree and believe that Terri is very aware of her surroundings. No doctors or medical professionals claim that Terri is in a coma.
MYTH: Terri Schiavo is dying and her family refuses to “let her go.”
FACT: Terri is not “dying.” In fact, she is a healthy woman who happens to have a disability. Terri is brain-damaged but she is not dying of any terminal illness and is not being sustained through a respirator. She breathes on her own and merely receives her food and hydration through a feeding tube. Terri’s family is asking to be given legal guardianship so that they may love and care for her.
MYTH: Death by starvation and dehydration is painless.
FACT: It is upsetting to note that Florida law does not allow a dog to be subjected to a death by starvation so why would should Terri, a human being be sentenced to such a death?
St. Louis neurologist William Burke said:
"A conscious [cognitively disabled] person would feel it just as you or I would. They will go into seizures. Their skin cracks, their tongue cracks, their lips crack. They may have nosebleeds because of the drying of the mucus membranes, and heaving and vomiting might ensue because of the drying out of the stomach lining. They feel the pangs of hunger and thirst. Imagine going one day without a glass of water! Death by dehydration takes ten to fourteen days. It is an extremely agonizing death."
ACT NOW!
Terri ping to 2063! Please contact John Grogan and let him know that he is incorrect about Terri's diagnosis! Let's FReep this guy! I'll bet anything he has ties to either Michael or someone in Michael's family.
If anyone would like to be added to or removed from my Terri ping list, please let me know by FReepmail!
?! What is that, like, don't ask, don't tell, just let 'em go to...?? sad.
Post #2050 and #2061 bump!
Contact John Grogan at 610-313-8132 or jgrogan@phillynews.com.
Post #2063 bump!
I've called and have mostly been put on interminable hold due to "heavy call volume." Hopefully a good sign.
Florida Partnership for End-of-Life Care
Coalition Activities
http://www.web-yoda.com/floridapartners/coalitionactivities.htm#a13
Pinellas County Coalition
Mike Bell
(727) 586-4432
mikebell@thehospice.org
Accomplished Activities
· Announced the Day of Decision (proclaimed by Governor Bush) in local
newspapers with a mail-in coupon for advance directive packets. Over
1,200 advance directive packets were requested and distributed.
· Conducted follow-up visits to the 38 congregations who are partners in
The Hospice's Caregivers United program encouraging them to post
"Isn't It Time We Talk About It" advance directive posters and distribute
book marks promoting the Series.
· Distributed "Grief in the Workplace" brochures to the top 117 employers in
Pinellas County.
Upcoming Activities
· Offering on-site counseling, support groups, and reviewing end-of-life
care services available to employees and their families.
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:-ElffZDXnqIJ:www.christianliferesources.com/cgi-bin/prDisplay.pl%3FdisplayContent%26releaseID%3D2908%26categoryID%3D45+%22mike+bell%22+%22felos%22&hl=en
The Schindlers' attorneys and some right-to-life advocates were hanging on to the slim chance that Terri Schiavo will be able to swallow enough liquid supplement to remain alive. Felos said she cannot.
Under protocols of care, patients who can swallow enough supplement to stay alive are provided it, said Mike Bell, a spokesman for The Hospice of Florida Suncoast. Otherwise, doctors are bound to follow the requests of Michael Schiavo. FELOS SAID TERRI SCHIAVO HAS NOT BEEN ABLE TO SWALLOW ENOUGH SUPPLEMENT TO KEEP HER ALIVE IN THE PAST.
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