Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, the ethicist who chaired the working committee that drafted the new guidelines, says although voluntary, they should help prevent any instance here of the legal bunfight that occurred in 2005 over the fate of US woman Terri Schiavo, in a persistent vegetative state since 1990.
Her case was dragged through the US courts, and even Congress, amid a bitter dispute between her husband and her Catholic parents over whether her feeding tube should be removed. Her parents had claimed there was still a slight hope she might improve, but she was allowed to die in March 2005 after the Supreme Court refused to intervene. An autopsy later showed her brain had shrunk markedly, and no recovery could have occurred.
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Associate Professor John Olver, director of rehabilitation at Melbourne's Epworth Hospital, said brain injury patients were slow to recover and needed better access to physio services that were not predicated on quick results.
"We have had patients in nursing homes who have come back for some reason or other, and because someone realises they show small signs of improvement they end up back in mainstream rehab, and have been able to get out of those nursing homes.''
That certainly gets Monica Blackstock's support. "I would like to see more help available for people like Brendan, rather than being in nursing homes. Being in a family environment, with familiar things around them, is far better for them.
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in upholding the federal partial-birth abortion ban, the court did defer to Congress, but not in the ordinary sense of allowing legislators to make a choice between competing values such as women's liberty and fetal life.
Instead, it elevated the medical judgment of members of Congress above that of doctors, including the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, which held that the banned procedure was sometimes the safest way to terminate a particular pregnancy.
That was a strange choice. As the Terry Schiavo case showed, Congress is not very good at playing doctor in politically charged areas.
How to judge the Roberts Supreme Court
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She wasn't dying, you morons. She was killed, slain, murdered, assassinated, put to death, executed. They wouldn't even give her an ice chip to ease her agony.
>> An autopsy later showed her brain had shrunk markedly, and no recovery could have occurred.
The new Michael Schiavo murder law: If you can make your wife's brain shrink enough, you get a second chance to kill her. The court will help.