Thursday, March 31, 2005

Terri Schiavo, RIP

Well, it's finally over. The media tsunami that is. As tragic as this all was, I am really ready to not hear about this on the news any more. I have written a few things about this in the past. Most notably I wrote that I was disgusted with her husbands treatment of her, and that I thought that he was just in this for himself.
What I should really be disgusted with is the press and media's inability to tell the story with any accuracy. I'm tired of hype as news. I want facts. Not just some of the facts, but all the facts. Let me make my own decision. The facts shouldn't be hard to come by, nor should they take up so much space that you need to leave some out to make you column fit on the news page.
Frankly, some of the facts I have heard now dispute that Michael Schiavo didn't do anything for her early on, and that at one point several years later, in 1998, he gave up and asked that she be allowed to die by removing the feed tube.
Who are we to say that this really wasn't Terri's wish?
Here is a fantastic, and long, summary and timeline of what has happened, and shows how all the facts have not been presented accurately or even at all.
Facts: Doctors performed tests on her for years, but recorded no higher level function over any of the 15 years she has been in this state. Therefore it's persistent. Patients should show some sign of improvement within weeks or even months, but not years.
The EEG tests, which show electrical activity, have shown NO cerebral cortex activity. Flatline.
More facts: Terri underwent more than three years of rehabilitative therapy after her collapse in 1990, and her husband took her to California late that same year to have an experimental device implanted in her brain in hopes of stimulating activity. He did not do nothing.
Facts: The only "experts" who maintain that she is responsive and not in a vegetative state are doctors speaking for the parents of Terri. Court appointed physicians have not been able to document any consistent responses from Terri that would indicate she is aware of her surroundings.
These facts don't get reported too much, just the politics and the rantings of the parents. I feel for the parents, I really do, but I don't see where they have the high ground here.

For that matter, I am really disassociated with moral conservatives on this issue. I am a conservative myself, but I often wonder at the fights that we pick in life, and whether or not they are worth fighting for. Probably the worst thing that could have happened did. Not Terri dying, it's arguable that happened 15 years ago. I mean moral conservatives went to the federal government and tried to work the system when the did not get the result they wanted after taking Michael Schiavo to court. As much as we think that we have the moral high ground in this argument, Terri's husband has the legal high ground. And after all we are a nation under the rule of law and not of men.
Morality and ethics should be there to guide the law, and perhaps influence it, but not dominate it. The thing that bothered me most about all the legal wrestling over the past few weeks is that congress and Terri's parents were attempting to set some pretty scary precedents in undermining the sanctity of the right of spouses to make critical decisions for each other.
And I would not want me or my wife sanctioned in the same way that Terri's parents were attempting to sanction him.

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