Terri Schiavo — A Tragedy Compounded

New England Journal of Medicine ^ | April 21, 2005 | Timothy E. Quill, M.D.

[bookworm100]

...Distortion by interest groups, media hyperbole, and manipulative use of videotape characterized this case and demonstrate what can happen when a patient becomes more a precedent-setting symbol than a unique human being...

[peter the great]

In considering such profound decisions, the central issue is not what family members would want for themselves or what they want for their incapacitated loved one, but rather what the patient would want for himself or herself. The New Jersey Supreme Court that decided the case of Karen Ann Quinlan got the question of substituted judgment right: If the patient could wake up for 15 minutes and understand his or her condition fully, and then had to return to it, what would he or she tell you to do.

Some more facts the Karen Ann Quinlan case involved the removal of a respirator not a feeding tube. As a matter of fact a Terri Schiavo situation could not happen in New Jersey because there is a law that it is illegal to deprive anyone of food or water. The second argument about waking up for 15 or 20 minutes and being able to comprehend fully your situation. I wonder what would happen if an attorney argued that it would be Spiritually beneficial to the victim to remain in the current state. How would that argument go over.

[harpo11]

Pro-euthanasia docs can blither on and on, their specious words never will change one undeniable fact, Terry Schiavo was murdered by cruel and unusual barbaric punishment of starvation and dehydration through court order because she was no longer considered a person, but instead Terri was an unwanted, undesired disabled butotherwisehealthy young wife of a sadistic man who has lived with another woman and their two children out of wedlock for the last ten years.