Posted on 04/07/2005 8:16:31 AM PDT by amdgmary
Judge George Greer, the Florida county jurist at the center of the Terri Schiavo case, ruled against a woman who was fighting to keep her husband alive in 2000.
While Greer has ruled consistently with husband Michael Schiavo, who seeks to terminate his wife's life by depriving of her of food and water, the parallel case suggests the judge may have a predisposition to removal of any life-support devices rather than an inclination toward the legal guardian.
The 2000 case heard by Greer involved the life of St. Petersburg lawyer Blair Clark, a University of South Florida professor. After suffering a heart attack Sept. 9, 2000, his children, who stood to inherit much of his estate, claimed they wanted to honor his wishes to remove him from a ventilator and feeding tube and allow him to die. His wife, Ping, however, believed his condition could improve with therapy and claimed only one month later treatments had not been given enough time.
Unlike Terri Schiavo, Blair Clark, 58, had a living will, which stated: "If the situation should arise in which there is no reasonable expectation of my recovery from severe physical or mental disability, I request that I be allowed to die and that life-prolonging procedures not be provided."
However, his wife believed there was still a reasonable expectation of recovery.
"His living will did not say, 'Don't save me, just let me die,'" his wife pleaded. "They want to kill Blair and I don't know why. I want to ask, 'What's the rush?' I'm the only one who wants to save him. Every time I say yes, they say no. I had to go to court to give him blood."
But on Oct. 24, 2000, Greer ruled in favor of the children and against the wishes of the wife, ordering all mechanical ventilation and intravenous nutrition stopped.
Ping Clark, of Chinese descent, argued that four days of Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture treatments had showed promise. She asked only for 30 more days of ventilator support and treatments.
Clark relied heavily on the opinion of neurologists, some of whom claimed Clark's chances of recovery were no greater than one in a thousand.
"If you love somebody, one in 1,000 is a chance worth taking, argued Dennis Rogers, Ping Clark's attorney.
After the ruling, Clark's wife was distraught and couldn't bear to visit the hospital to watch him die.
"I cannot see him die," she cried. "I know how much he wants to live. They'll be guilty their whole lives for killing Blair Clark."
Clark died a week after the ruling, Oct. 31, 2000.
Schiavo's feeding tube was removed Friday by order of Greer at the request of her estranged husband, Michael Schiavo, who contends Terri had expressed a wish to not live under her present condition. Parents Robert and Mary Schindler dispute the court's finding that their daughter is in a "persistent vegetative state," citing numerous physicians who believe she is responsive and could benefit from therapy.
My last post makes me think that as a consolation to family members who feel so bad about the no inheritance thing...you could always leave them a T-shirt that says, "My ________ just died, and all I got from them was this lousy T-shirt!" Just kidding! ;-)
Lord help us, indeed..
....keep the name of the charity undisclosed until after your death, too, to make sure they don't have any say in pushing your over the edge......
LOL. Right!!!!
We'll get this all worked out yet. By the time we get there, it may be a 7 page Living Will.
We may have to specify what kind of food we get ....... nothing with dog food in it, only Ensure supplements. If a feeding tube, choice of food must be approved by the local druggist as well as the physician (note: unless this druggist sits on the board of the medical facility in which I am a resident. If so, a druggist from another city must give approval.)
The problem under our coming America, is the definition of "reasonable" and "expectation of recovery".
Reasonable to an euthanasia proponent would be they would never recover within one month and if they did, they would require extreme surgical procedures,.....etc....etc...etc.
You are missing the point. There are some that want others done away with. They do not want the disabled to clutter up the funds distribution. They prefer to allow illegal immigrants to come in and sap our welfare and obtain our same benefits but if you are an American citizen and not hale and hearty, they want you gone.
(An extreme scenario but apparently this is the direction many want and the laws are being manipulated daily to bring about the right to kill others.)
Did these real estate scandals involve the assets of an elderly person?
Apparently Florida has a lot of mistreatment of the elderly's assets.
From Unsourced document posted by mercyme on another thread.
"They also state that advanced directives providing for treatment should not carry the same weight as directives withdrawing care, and advanced directives should not compel the physican to provide them, regardless if the patient needs them (Doty). Doty is part of the Florida Bioethics Network as well as Project Grace. One of the changes in the law in CB/CB/SB 2228 includes the Bioethics Network as part of the process of withdrawing care. " Very chilling and another step in the end-of-life panel's move toward the doctor being able to over-rule your wishes.
I think they involved the 'assets' of many elderly people, namely, the citizens of St. Pete or Clearwater or whichever city council Greer sat on. Believe it or not, I'm almost positive it had something to do with some swampland! Greer took the proverbial joke to a new standard. I don't remember all the details, but that was the gist of it as I recall. I think there's a bio of Greer running around somewhere where Greer's antics are detailed. You could probably even google it.
daylate-dollarshort is a troll for Judge Greer.
Right - your version would be different to mine.
It is the decision of the ill one that counts - not the judge, not the euthanasia proponents, not the children, the wife. And, the state should not over-rule the specified instructions in the Living Will.
Yet, they will. All they will have to do is make a law over-riding a living will. Or, get the option that a doctor can over-rule the living will if needed. Which may already be done in Fla. according to the following.....
"They also state that advanced directives providing for treatment should not carry the same weight as directives withdrawing care, and advanced directives should not compel the physican to provide them, regardless if the patient needs them (Doty). Doty is part of the Florida Bioethics Network as well as Project Grace. One of the changes in the law in CB/CB/SB 2228 includes the Bioethics Network as part of the process of withdrawing care. "
How lovely! You know these hospice people come into the homes of the sick elderly and try to coerce them to sign these forms. You have to be very strong-willed, as my father was, to resist the "sales pitch" that they give you. It's a lot like having a door-to-door salesman come into your home and they don't walk away without selling you something.
I think that many of these organizations are preying on the elderly. They take advantage of the fact that their health is deteriorating. Next thing you know, the forms are signed and the person is in hospice care dying. Then after they pass on, how many times do you see that "in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to XYZ hospice". It turns into a money-making but non-profitable venture.
And just why were the rights of Terri Schaivo never protected in all the 15 years of trials?
Her family never won one round did they? How come?
Why was the fact that her husband had another wife and two children and was still by the courts allowed to make life and death determinations for an invalid wife? If it had been the other way around, do you really think the law would have overlooked that point? No, they would not.
The law in this case used every interpretation in its power to put Terri to death. They ignored the fact that the law stated a feeding tube could not be removed, they ignored a federal subpoena, they ignored a law calling for another review with new eyes. Why? Because the powerful euthanasia forces wanted the test case on the books for a precedent of accepting "hearsay evidence" instead of written instructions, and Michael wanted his wife dead.
Don't bother telling us the law did this, the law did that. We know exactly what the law is doing in Louisiana - it is allowing some to impose a faster death on the weak. Why? Assets? Property? Who knows?
We can see through the smoke screen of all of this as can over 50% of the American public. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.
We know what they are up to.
Very good points and I agree.
Gosh....had not thought of the "in lieu of flowers"......
All of hospice is going to take a huge hit on their reputations because of this case.
I was in total praise of them with my experience with them, but, now, I am looking at all through new eyes.
How very easy to be trained in the stock triggering phrases which will appeal to the different family members they encounter. Phrases such as "her body is already shutting down", "this is just to prevent prolonging her suffering"....
How can we ever trust again? We have ghouls among us preying on the weak in our society.
And those sweet little souls are depending on us to watch over their death as they watched over our birth.
It would have been virtually impossible to wean him from the ventalator after 30 day already. Thirty more days would have made the weaning probability even worse, although I'm not sure what's worse than virtually impossible.
What do you mean, virtually impossible? Are you saying that he would immediately die upon removal?
I've never heard that as a fast rule regarding ventilators. On the contrary, I've heard plenty of stories where people surprise doctors and breathe on their own after removing a vent. Karen Ann Quinlan lived for ten years after hers was removed.
LOL.
You have a very creative mind ...... you will go far. Where I don't know - but far.
They wanted their inheritance and didn't want to wait 30 days for it.
You can 'follow the money' in the other direction, too. As long as the guy was alive, the estate wasn't being disbursed. Would be interesting to know if the estate generated significant amounts of unearned income which his spouse stood to lose.
It would seem that Greer sides with whatever family members stand to gain financially from a patient's death.
If one looks only as the financial aspects of this case, then it must be noted that the wife had a vested interest in retaining the estate & the only way she could do that was to keep the ventilator plugged in & chugging along.
Apparently, Greer is a serial murderer.
He is no different than those "angel of mercy" nurses who work in nursing homes and secretly murder old people. Except Greer does it right out in the open, wrapped in a judge's robes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.