The Economist: Waiting for more Terri Schiavos

[question everything]

Waiting for more Terri Schiavos

FROM THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE

April 1, 2005

(snip)

Her life, whatever its quality, became the property not merely of her husband (who had the legal right to speak for her) and her parents (who had brought her up), but of the courts, the state and thousands of self-appointed medical and psychological experts across the country.

The chief difference between her case and those of Karen Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan, much earlier victims of "persistent vegetative state," was the existence of the Internet. When posted videotapes showed Schiavo apparently smiling and communicating with those around her, doctors called these mere reflex activity, but to the layman they seemed to reveal a human being who should not be killed.

On March 20, a CAT scan of Schiavo's brain – the gray matter of the cerebral cortex more or less gone, replaced by cerebrospinal fluid – was posted on a blog. By March 29, it had brought 390 passionate and warring responses.

(snip)

Her "supporters" outside the Supreme Court last week, standing in silence with the word "Life" taped over their mouths, presumed to represent her views. She, dying slowly, had no views. To take the side of life, rather than death, is a fundamentally good philosophy; and an autopsy may yet show – though this seems doubtful – that her medical state was less appalling, and irreversible, than it seemed.

Nonetheless both the public outcry about her and the frenzy of politicians to save her were also artificially inflated by technology, a culture of litigation and the power of the Christian right. An immense cloud of public interest came to conceal a dreadful, but private, dilemma that was for doctors and family members to solve with their consciences and their priests. As it was, in the current climate, there will probably be more Terri Schiavos.

The Economist is a London-based weekly news magazine.


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050401/news_lz1e1economis.html

[zbdent]

1. Funny how that "non-existent" CAT scan

showed up - you know, the one that the Repukes claim never was performed . . .

[joneschick]

2. I hadn't heard that

Were they really calling the CAT scan bogus?

[zbdent]

3. The repukes kept claiming that Michael Schiavo

never allowed one to be performed - more in the demonizing . . .