Bill Frist (R), a surgeon and Senate majority leader from Tennessee, says that these medical opinions are all wrong and that he feels that she is conscious of what is going on and believes, like the parents, that Terri could get better with treatment. First, Bill Frist also thinks that you can get AIDS from sweat and tears. What does he really know about the persistent vegetative state if he can be such a moron on AIDS? He definitely is no brain surgeon. Second, you can't regrow the brain. Once it is liquified- that's pretty much all she wrote. She can't recover. There's nothing to recover. She may seem to be responding in some meaningful way to the things that happen around her, but they are just reflexes. Her higher function brain regions are GONE. They can't be functioning because they are GONE. So no matter how much the parents and others wish and hope that she could recover- she won't. The reason they are hanging onto her and not letting her go on to be with God is purely selfish. They don't want her out of their lives. God tried to take her fifteen years ago and they refused to deal with it and let her go.
I agree that starving and dehydrating her to death is a terrible way to do it, but what we are demanding for animals just hasn't dawned on us to be good for humans too- euthanasia.
And as for these politicians claiming that they are just trying to do what is right by Terri- there was a memo that went around congress within the last two weeks that says the Schiavo case was "a great political issue" and saying that Christian conservatives would be "excited" by the Senate debate (Reuters).
My dad says that Micheal has some sort of ulterior motive. What's that? Oh, I'd really like to put my life through hell for the next thirteen years (he didn't start the battle until two years after her brain damage occurred) and spend all my money doing it! Yeah, that sounds like a plan. I feel that he really wanted to give Terri her final wish and was willing to do whatever it took to do it. He has nothing else to gain from this. Terri has no quality of life. Who would want to live that way? Not me!
And as for this life-loving Bush, when he was helping make laws in Texas he passed a law (the Texas Futile Care Law) that says that the hospital can pull the plug on anyone that can't pay and is deemed unrecoverable regardless of the person's or family's wishes. In the past few weeks this law was used to pull the plug on a baby that was born with a birth defect. The mother believed that the baby could live without life support if given just a little more time to develop but her wishes were denied. I am not saying that this was not a good medical decision- what I am saying is that Bush isn't what he says he is. "Culture of Life" is just a power trip. He uses it to keep the religious reich on his side. Another reason I don't trust his spiel about "culture of life" is that it took him three days to respond on the tsunami disaster that killed over 65 times the amount of people as 9/11 (and there was immediate outpouring from all over the world for 9/11 but it takes him 3 days to decide if we as a country will send our sympathy and help to the tsunami victims?) and for Terri Schiavo he made a special trip out of vacation (which isn't he ALWAYS on vacation?) to Washington to sign the legislation to intervene. Very inconsistent which reeks of ulterior motives.
LA Times Story-brief history of the fifteen year battle
Rueters Story-talks about congressional intervention
Medical Field
Very Good Article On Daily Kos
ugh. I never heard about the baby thing. that's awful.
Bush is an ass, no way about it. His arguments that we're supposed to "err on the side of life" is total bullshit, as he proved over and over again as governor of texas.
thanks for stopping by - glad it made you laugh!
March 28, 2005 8:09 PM