DeLay Engages Medical Ethics in the Schiavo Case

[mlovell]

[John]

Do we have access to this memo? Or is it one of those still "secret" things.

[mlovell]

[mlovell]

[fox]

[Wade]

[David Flick]

[Jonathan]

[bobfrgsn]

[mlovell]

[Layne]

[Wade]

[mlovell]

[jerryl]

[David Flick]

I have agreed more often than not with . But after watching him cover the Terri Schiavo case over the past couple of days, I'm getting sick of him. Alan Colmes is getting it right more and more of the time...

[Layne]

Ml,
Does your required reading list include the words of a woman who was disconnected from her feeding tube when she was falsely diagnosed as being in a PVS?

"Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor, Adamson was asked if having her feeding tube removed was painful. She replied: "Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. To say that--especially when Michael [Schiavo] on national TV mentioned last week that it's a pretty painless thing to have the feeding tube removed--it is the exact opposite. It was sheer torture."

Here is Smith's account of Adamson's story:

In preparation for this article, I contacted Adamson for more details about the torture she experienced while being dehydrated. She told me about having been operated upon (to remove the bowel obstruction) with inadequate anesthesia when doctors believed she was unconscious:

"The agony of going without food was a constant pain that lasted not several hours like my operation did, but several days. You have to endure the physical pain and on top of that you have to endure the emotional pain. Your whole body cries out, 'Feed me. I am alive and a person, don't let me die, for God's Sake! Somebody feed me.'"

Unbelievably, she described being deprived of food and water as "far worse" than experiencing the pain of abdominal surgery. Despite having been on an on an IV saline solution, Adamson still had horrible thirst:

"I craved anything to drink. Anything. I obsessively visualized drinking from a huge bottle of orange Gatorade. And I hate orange Gatorade. I did receive lemon flavored mouth swabs to alleviate dryness but they did nothing to slack my desperate thirst.""

While I respect the expert opinion, it does defy common sense and at least one woman's experience.

Grace and Peace
Layne

PS Krauthammer's take in today's Washington Post is excellent.

[mlovell]

Much medical knowledge does defy common sense -- one has only to read the history of medicine for that to be painfully clear.

Kate Adamson is one person who suffered agonies as a result of a misdiagnosis. If all medical decisions are made on the basis of one isolated case of error, ignoring the accounts of others, the world will be a very different place. If the state chooses to insert itself into the private medical decisions made by family in consultation with doctors, the world will be a very different place.

The Schindlers' expressed view of how they'd treat Terri (even if she'd told them personally she wanted something else) reminds me mightily of those who choose cryogenics after death.

[Norm]

: "... I don’t care what her husband says.”

[Jonathan]

[mlovell]

[bdfoster]

[wilkey]

[Jonathan]

[mlovell]

[Jonathan]