Schiavo Thread Part Deux

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ned
There is the corrolary issue on whether a state may put someone to death who has some consciousness and who does not require anything more than being fed to maintain life.

Individuals have the right to refuse medical treatment.

I assume no one here has ever read the original finding of the court and what evidence they used to make the finding that Terry Schiavo would have refused medical care. What the Schindlers or their people say is irrelevant, since they are utterly biased parties.

As for "new proof", what "new proof" can there possibly be about what Terry's wishes were?

As for the notiont aht no courts ever examined the findings of fact of the first court- how can that possibly be?? In the original appeals by the Schindler's one assumes they at that point challenged the finding of facts, unless the Schindler lawyers have been utterly incompetent throughout.

[Admiral]

Apparently, anyone who disagrees with the religious right on this issue is Hitler:

http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=2196

Hitler Targeted The Handicapped First

March 24, 2005 – The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum features an online display showing how German physicians under Adolf Hitler (and even before Hitler came to power) had created a euthanasia program to kill those deemed “unworthy of life.” According to the Museum: “The victims included the mentally retarded, the institutionalized mentally ill, and the physically impaired.”

The Museum noted: “The ‘euthanasia’ program required the cooperation of many German doctors, who reviewed the medical files of patients in institutions to determine which handicapped or mentally ill individuals should be killed. The doctors also supervised the actual killings. Doomed patients were transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austria, where they were killed in specially constructed gas chambers. Handicapped infants and small children were also killed by injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation. The bodies of the victims were burned in large ovens called crematoria.

The roots of Hitler’s euthanasia program began in 1920 with the publishing of an essay by Dr. Alfred Hoche and law professor Karl Binding. The essay, “Releasing Persons from Lives Devoid of Value,” recommended a new medical ethic to deal with mental patients and those whose lives were considered worthless.

According to Hoche and Binding, useless individuals were to be killed to save money and to release them from the perceived miseries of living a life devoid of value.

Hoche introduced the concept of “mental death” to describe the retarded or those who suffered from other forms of brain damage (much like Terri Schiavo’s condition). He described these people as “human ballast” and said that killing them would be useful and allowable act under the law.

The idea of “mental death” and killing the handicapped swept rapidly through Germany. In 1931, a group of psychiatrists met in Bavaria to discuss the sterilization and killing of those with chronic mental illnesses. By 1936 the practice of killing the socially unfit was so common that it was mentioned only incidentally in a German medical journal.

Dr. Leo Alexander, a Boston psychiatrist, detailed the horrors of the pre-Nazi and Nazi euthanasia program in an essay titled, “Medical Science Under Dictatorship,” published in the July 14, 1949 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Alexander served as a consultant to the Secretary of War during the Nuremberg trials.

According to Alexander, the shift that took place among doctors was subtle. It began with the view that there is such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived. “Gradually,” said Alexander, “it led to killing the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted, and finally all non-Germans.”

Robert Jay Lifton writing in The Nazi Doctors describes the Nazi euthanasia program and its eventual use against the Jews.

The philosophy of the Nazi doctors lives on today in the minds of federal judges and pro-euthanasia organizations as well as Michael Schiavo and his New Age attorney George Felos.

[TCO]

My familiy just went through this as my grandmother was in a coma for a month after a stroke. There was a sharp division regarding giving her continued care. And NOONE on either side seemed to care what she would have wanted (or knew for sure). My sister suspected she would have choose life as she was a very vibrant and "grabby" lady. If someone cooked something and it wasn't any good, she still wanted to taste it...

At this point, it really seems like you need to have a living will TO PREVENT people from denying you medical care.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
Most states require a writing or something more than just the testimony of a single witness that is not corroborated in some fashion. Florida, however, does not.

There's more than one witness, including one of Terry's brothers.

[TCO]

I think presumption should be for life and that a living will should be required to turn off. But having seen how things work now, I'm getting a living will that prevents turnoff.

[Sava]

NAZIS FOR TERRI!

[Kuciwalker]

...

WTF?

[Sava]

I know, i don't get it either

[Dis]

I was watching this thing on the news where they explain the politicians see the tapes released by the parents, and they think there is life there. But I don't see it.

What do you guys see when you see the tapes released by the parents? Those are the best tapes out there (that show the most "activity"). What I see is not life, but pathetic. How can they call that a smile? It's just heartbreaking watching those tapes. Why would you keep that alive? If it were a dog, we'd shoot it.

Kill her now!

[Dis]

Now this is what I'm talking about: civil disobedience and crime.

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-brain-damaged-woman-arrest,0,4268134,print.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines

man tries to steal gun to "rescue" terri schiavo. I want to see more of this stuff. I need something to entertain me.

No I don't want anyone to actually die in this (except Terri of course). I'm not that sadistic. I just like to see some action.

edit: I see Drose already beat me to this news. Oh well.

[DRoseDARs]

In related news, here's more stupidity

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050325/480/cho10603251929

Pinellas County Sheriff's deputies, and Pinellas Park, Fla., police officers arrest 10-year-old Joshua Heldreth, of Charlotte, N.C., for trespassing on Woodside Hospice property in Pinellas park, Fla. Heldreth was attempting to bring Terri Schiavo a glass of water. Schiavo's feeding tube was removed by court order Friday, March 18, 2005. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

[Sava]

death penatly

[Dis]

I bet Michael Jackson is turned on by that picture.

It'd be so funny if he succeeded though and gave her the water, and she drowned. That sound sick, but it's a relatively painless death, much quicker than she's going through now.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

NEW YORK (AP) A new CBS News poll has found that four of five people polled opposed federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case, with levels of disapproval among key groups supporting the GOP almost that high.

More than two-thirds of people who describe themselves as evangelicals and conservatives disapprove of the intervention by Congress and President Bush in the case of Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman at the center of a national debate.

Other polls have shown huge majorities casting doubt on efforts to keep the severely brain damaged woman alive.

Bush's overall approval was at 43 percent, down from 49 percent last month.

Over the weekend, Republicans in Congress pushed through emergency legislation aimed at prolonging Schiavo's life by allowing the case to be reviewed by federal courts. That bill was signed by the president early Monday.

Most Americans say they feel sympathy for family members on both sides of the dispute over the 41-year-old Schiavo, according to a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll.

More than eight in 10 in that poll said they feel sympathy for Bob and Mary Schindler, parents of Schiavo, who want to keep her alive. And seven in 10 said they're sympathetic for Michael Schiavo, the husband of Schiavo who says she should be allowed to die.

The CBS News poll of 737 adults was taken Monday and Tuesday and the CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll of 620 adults was taken Tuesday. Both have margins of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

[DRoseDARs]

Bush's overall approval was at 43 percent, down from 49 percent last month.

I'm DRoseDARs and I approve of this message.