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To: Caramelgal; 8mmMauser; BykrBayb; floriduh voter; Lesforlife
I would also ask how many of you have every had a family member languish in long term care for years in a vegetative state and kept artificially alive against the patient’s and family’s expressed wishes for end of life care and dying by very slow degrees over many years?

What are you talking about? Since when is food and water "artificial life support"? There is NO EVIDENCE that Lauren has ever expressed a desire to be killed and your contention that she is dying in "slow degrees" is FALSE.

33 posted on 05/08/2008 4:59:00 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee
IF a feeding tube had never been inserted, and if hydration HAD not been in place, then it would be a natural death. To remove the feeding tube and hydration makes it murder by state, plain and simple. The mother is asking the court to allow the murder of her daughter, just as Michael Schiavo did to Terri.

Anyone ever wonder why Judge Greer felt it necessary to order that no one try to feed Terri by mouth, not to give her water?

36 posted on 05/08/2008 6:18:59 AM PDT by Abby4116
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To: wagglebee
LAUREN RICHARDSON is on youtube and she's not languishing (definition please). She's alert and aware and wake up, creeper freepers, you are projecting your fears on someone you don't even know.

This is essentially a committee of strangers getting to decide who lives and who dies.

Let Lauren Live! Who are you freeper creepers to judge her but if you can't help yourself,visit youtube and see Lauren's a living, breathing person!

39 posted on 05/08/2008 7:17:57 AM PDT by floriduh voter (FL Gov. Crist "This is America. I can wear whatever I want. I believe in freedom." You go, girl.)
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To: wagglebee; 8mmMauser
What are you talking about? Since when is food and water "artificial life support"?

A feeding tube is “artificial” in the sense that a feeding tube is medical procedure where in a tube is inserted directly into the stomach of a patient who is unable take food and water orally and nutrients are artificially forced into the patient. This technology was not available until the late 1800’s and only perfected enough in the last 25 years to make it a viable course of treatment to sustain life for patients who cannot take nutrients otherwise.

Feeding tubes definitely have a place in sustaining life just as ventilators and other means of artificial life support do and I’m not against their use when the patient has any reasonable or even remote chance of recovery or of recovering any quality of life or one who has cognitive brain function but with a physical disability that necessitates a feeding tube.

But to keep a person or better stated a “body” alive, a body with no higher brain function or cognitive awareness or any chance of recovery seems rather ghoulish and selfish to me. I’m sorry we disagree but in the case of my mother in law, I think it would have been more merciful and more moral and ethical to allow her to die a natural death, kept comfortable with the use of sedatives and pain medication presuming that she had any rudimentary sense of pain or sensation left, rather than to see her suffer the great indignities her body endured during the last four years of her physical life.

First, yes, we have been in that predicament, for twenty six years with a child many would say was PVS, and yet he lead a happy loving life, severely retarded and no way would we give him up. We are pro-life with no buts.

I am sorry about your child’s severe retardation and I absolutely applaud you and your family for caring for and loving your child. I in no way support “euthanasia” for the mildly or even the most severely disabled. But a person with Downs Syndrome, no matter how severely afflicted is not the same a person in a PVS. A person with Downs Syndrome, in even the most severe forms, still has some cognitive functions and a sense of self and awareness.

I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding about a PVS and those coma patients in a minimally conscious state. When there are “miraculous” stories about people coming out of long term comas, they are patients who have been in a minimally conscious state and not patients who have been in a PVS. Patients in a minimally conscious state have a much better chance at realizing some level of recovery even after many years in that state than do patients in a persistent vegetative state. After being in a PVS for more than a year there is statistically no hope for any recovery. While patients in a PVS are not technically brain dead, it is only that part of the brain, the brain stem, the part of the brain responsible for heart rate and rhythm, respiration, gastrointestinal activity that still functions while the rest of the brain responsible for awareness ceases to function.

Recent functional neuroimaging results have shown that some parts of the cortex are still functioning in 'vegetative' patients. Such studies are disentangling the neural correlates of the vegetative state from the minimally conscious state, and have major clinical consequences in addition to empirical importance for the understanding of consciousness (Laureys, 2000). The minimally conscious state (MCS) is a recently defined clinical condition that differs from the persistent vegetative state (PVS) by the presence of inconsistent, but clearly discernible, behavioral evidence of consciousness (Boly, 2004). Researchers have analyzed functional neuroimaging results and demonstrated that cerebral activity observed in patients in an MCS is more likely to lead to higher-order integrative processes, thought to be necessary for the gain of conscious auditory perception. (Sara et al, 2007).

Maybe be it’s me; however, usually somebody says, “I’m pro-life, but,” it turns out that they are pretty much okay with killing any person for any reason. It’s the same as saying abortions should be “safe and legal and rare.”

Neither of you know me well enough and where I stand on abortion to make such a rash and uninformed opinion of me.
42 posted on 05/08/2008 6:36:04 PM PDT by Caramelgal (Rely on the spirit and meaning of the teachings, not on the words or superficial interpretations)
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