Terry Shiavo Back in the News...

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Doctors Split 3-2 On Schiavo In 2000 Greer Court Decision

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I'll take a 3-2 split any time.

'slong 's I'm the 3.

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Well the court took the 3-2 split also--and I probably would too. But that is a whole lot different than claiming that that should have left no room for doubt.

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The results of the autopsy are irrelevant to the court decisions. Even if the autopsy had come the other way, I would still say that the courts appear to have acted according to the law, with due process. I would still say that Congress was wrong in trying to meddle and the courts were right the reject the political meddling.

I would still say, as I did in the original discussion, that a review of guardianship laws may be worth considering in a calm and rational manner.

Following the results of the autopsy (if it showed an error, perhaps if not as well), I would want a medical review of the decision making process to see why the original diagnosis was wrong. There may be civil cases that the family could now bring against the doctors and, perhaps, the husband. I dont support any significant medical malpractice reforms -- this case is an example of why.

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"June 17, 2005, 7:50 a.m.
The Schiavo Post-Mortem

The results of the autopsy of Terri Schiavo are being taken as a vindication for the successful campaign to dehydrate her to death and a rebuke to those who unsuccessfully resisted this campaign. They should not be.

A great many claims and counter-claims were made in the course of the contentious debate over Mrs. Schiavo’s fate, and the autopsy sheds light on some of them. No evidence was found that Schiavo’s 1990 collapse was caused by abuse at the hands of her husband. Her brain damage was found to be irreversible. And she was found to have been blind. (News accounts of the autopsy leave it unclear whether it was determined when blindness set in and when the brain damage became irreversible.)

These are the three main findings that are held to retrospectively validate one side of the argument. But no responsible critic of Mrs. Schiavo’s dehydration rested his case on an allegation of abuse. (NR explicitly urged opponents of the dehydration not to make such reckless allegations.) While many people held out the hope that treatment might improve Schiavo’s condition, very few people thought it at all likely that she would recover to the point, for example, of being able to hold a conversation.

About the main arguments against killing Terri Schiavo, the autopsy had nothing to say. Many people believed that it is wrong deliberately to bring about the death of innocent human beings, whatever their condition; that it is especially wrong when there is doubt about what that person wanted, and when her family members are willing to provide care for her; that Mr. Schiavo was too compromised to make this decision; that a law enabling the killing of people in a “persistent vegetative state” should not be stretched to cover people who might be “minimally conscious”; and that the Supreme Court should not have established the current lax standards for denying incapacitated people food and water. Nobody who believed these things has any reason to change his mind based on this week’s evidence. — The Editors"

http://www.nationalreview.com/editor...0506170750.asp

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And you should have tried to make the argument on those points instead of relying upon incorrect, emotionally involved, and biased diagnosises, which were after reading the opposition, were quite suspect.

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And you should have tried to make the argument on those points instead of relying upon incorrect, emotionally involved, and biased diagnosises, which were after reading the opposition, were quite suspect.

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What are you talking about? Those were approximately the points I made all along going back to the old threads.

My main points early in this thread hinged on the fact that there were some doubts back then--and since someone essentially claimed there were not doubts, even back then, I had to find a link to prove that some doubts existed. Which I did, although I wasn't willing to Google enough to prove that each doubt existed.

I thought it entirely wrong that there were posters in this thread essentially ridiculing the notion that anyone could have harbored legitimate doubts back then (doubts about quite an assortment of issues).

And since you refer to those diagnoses as "suspect", that means there WAS some doubt---right? And that is just one of many areas where some degree of doubts existed while the tragic saga was unfolding.

As I responded to another poster, what you think the relationsh
between doubt and life should be, reflects your own personal view. But that is another matter from whether any legitimate doubts existed, or not.

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There were legitimate doubts. They got shot down, each and every one of them. That's what I was saying. There was good evidence on the other side, and the evidence you were presenting was weaker, much weaker.

"Reasonable doubt" may have been a very lofty word, but I think that every argument against the vegetative state was answered. Of course, I could be wrong, but if you don't mind digging back there for places where your arguments held up, I wouldn't argue.

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There were legitimate doubts. They got shot down, each and every one of them. That's what I was saying.

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Those doubts were not disproved.

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There was good evidence on the other side, and the evidence you were presenting was weaker, much weaker.

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That fits in perfectly with what I've been saying. Some doubt, not certainty (either way). If something is, say, 93% certain, then there's doubt...right?

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"Reasonable doubt" may have been a very lofty word, but I think that every argument against the vegetative state was answered. Of course, I could be wrong, but if you don't mind digging back there for places where your arguments held up, I wouldn't argue.

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Well I'm afraid I'm not going back to dig; those threads were numerous and very lengthy.

It isn't a matter of my "arguments holding up". It's a question of how readily or easily our society and laws can end the life of the incapacitated, especially when doubts remain regarding various matters, including even her wishes.

Yes I know it was all determined in court and likely properly so. But as I said I think the laws should probably be changed to afford at least some higher level of legal protection for the impaired. I can easily conjure or envision a scenario where an heir could utilize the system to have an elder terminated in this manner against their wishes. Heck it came VERY close to happening to Mae Magouirk who had even left a will saying she would want to live. I posted on this before and I'm not dredging it up again; I just wanted to use it to illustrate a point. The incapacitated are being killed by dehydration and they AREN'T all brain dead or comatose, and our court system does not offer them a whole lot of protection.