Priorities

[gasgod]

The Terri Chiavo case, IMO, has shown that we don't have our priorities in order.

How can it be in the national interest to devote so much effort to 'save' a woman's life when she doesn't have a functioning brain? Wouldn't we be better off to spend the same effort where it might do some good?

Our capacity for providing medical care is not infinite. In my view, providing around-the-clock medical care for Terri is tantamount to denying medical care to those who could benefit from it.

In my opinion, those who assert that Terri could benefit in any meaningful way from the care she was given are driven by their own ideology, and not by any genuine concern for Terri herself. Terri had no capacity for meaningful life. Her brain was all but destroyed, and nothing could ever reverse that.

We can understand that her parents might want her life to be maintained. But why can we not see that the effort involved could be better spent elsewhere?

We cannot, and should not, try to keep everybody alive forever. Medical care should be rationed; those who can benefit the most should be accorded the highest priority.

To those who object that this is "playing God", I say that we have no real choice.


GG

[BCPVP]

There aren't enough Schiavo threads?

I think we've argued this to death and nobody is really budging that much.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
How can it be in the national interest to devote so much effort to 'save' a woman's life when she doesn't have a functioning brain?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yet another person that doesn't get it and the implications of this statement are positively frightening. Your implication is that her feeding tube was removed simply because she was found by a court of law to be in a PVS. That's irrelevant if Terry would have wanted to remain in that state. The Court determined that she had made statements before her collapse that she would not want to be kept alive in that state. If the Court would have made a determination that there was not clear and convincing evidence that she wanted to have the feeding tube removed in a PVS, the feeding tube would still be connected.

Your implication is that your fine with pulling the feeding irregardless of what Terri would have wanted. That to me is really scary and determining who among the disabled should be put to death is a slippery slope. It may start with those on life support systems but where does it end?

[gasgod]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How can it be in the national interest to devote so much effort to 'save' a woman's life when she doesn't have a functioning brain?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yet another person that doesn't get it and the implications of this statement are positively frightening. Your implication is that her feeding tube was removed simply because she was found by a court of law to be in a PVS.
...

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm afraid it is you that doesn't get it. Read carefully the text you quoted, and try to relate it to the title of the thread.

I didn't imply, say, or hint that Terri be put to death because she didn't have a functioning brain. What I said was that we devoted an enormous amount of national effort (medical, legal, news coverage, etc.) to a case that is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Now, I am not saying that the national debate over the underlying issues is unimportant. What I am saying is that the national hysteria over the fate of Terri herself is an example of misplaced priorities.

Do you see the difference?


GG

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
Your implication is that her feeding tube was removed simply because she was found by a court of law to be in a PVS. That's irrelevant if Terry would have wanted to remain in that state.

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely correct. Unfortunately, it looks like that is not universally the case.