Secular Right

As medical science progresses this will only get worse. Where does the humanity reside? If her brain were gone, would they still want to keep the body alive?

‘we know our daughter, this is not her, it never again will be her, she has suffered long enough and so have we. Death is a natural part of life; it is time for her to die.’

I truly can understand those feelings, especially after 17 years! However, it would not do to take that line of reasoning too far. My son suffered a severe closed head injury and though he was never completely unresponsive, he emerged a stranger. He was not the son I knew before and he never would be again, yet I’ve come to love to person he is.

This is not a comparable situation by any means, it’s just that I must say that who they were and who they might be should not be a death sentence.

And I recognize that is not what her father meant.

The circumstances here are slightly different than the Schiavo case. In that instance, Terri Schiavo’s husband, who was living with another woman (and therefore had a conflict of interest) wished to remove life-support over the wishes of Terri’s parents. I was on the parent’s side in that case.

In this case, it is the father who believes the time has come for nature to take its course. His wishes should be respected.

I’m with you TrueNorth – In both cases.

Sorry to OT, but speaking of life and death….

We are currently in the middle of a serious crisis in my state of Victoria, Australia. Over a hundred people have died as a result of massive bushfires that have spread following a more than week-long summer heatwave.

January/February are usually our hottest months, but this year has been exceptional. The heatwave broke all historical records going back over 150 years, with temperatures day after day, well over 40C/104F. It culminated on Saturday with temperatures in the state capital, Melbourne, reaching 46.4C/115.5F – an all-time record.

I can tell you, that was a seriously warm day.

The devastating fires followed, some of them deliberately lit, some by carelessness – cigarette butts mostly, some sparked by lightning.

These are the most destructive bushfires in Australia’s recorded history. And we are not strangers to summer fires. Currently a cooler weather-change, which is expected to last all week, is bringing some relief. Firefighters and emergency services continue to try to contain damage and put out fires.

Fortunately the fires have, so far, not threatened the city of Melbourne itself, with a population of nearly four million. Most of the fires have occured in smaller communities to the North and West of Melbourne. Some of which have been devastated with wind-fanned fires advancing across a firefront up to 100km wide (at Kinglake).

It does not help that we have had a multi-year drought, so water is low and vegetation is very dry.

I have always hated our hot summers. This does nothing to improve my opinion. We have three brilliant seasons – one nasty one. I sometimes regret not having snow in winter though, I grew up in Europe.

Snow. Now that’s a nice cooling thought. Appeals to nonexistent divinities unhelpful. Please transmit snowthoughts.

@TrueNorth,
“In that instance, Terri Schiavo’s husband, who was living with another woman (and therefore had a conflict of interest) wished to remove life-support over the wishes of Terri’s parents.”

Not to reopen this can of worms, but the same “conflict of interest” charge applies to the Schiavo parents, too. The question isn’t what the husband wanted or what the parents wanted, but what the patient would have wanted. It is as much a conflict for the parents to want to override the desires of the patient and to press to keep the machines running because they didn’t want to face the truth or wanted to cling to false hope that any conflict that the husband faced. That’s why we have a legal process in place, to make that determination free from these conflicts. That the Republicans couldn’t see that and meddled in this family’s pain (and this non-federal issue) was one of a long string of abuses, evil and negligence over the last 15 years that makes me glad I dumped the party.

We can argue that both the parents and the husband had conflicts of interest.

Who, then, had a pure interest? Most of the people who spoke in public on the subject seemed to have no actual interests involved at all. The entire brouhaha was nothing more than a chance to forward their ideology and exercise their influence in the social sphere.

I have no great respect for the field of medicine, but it seems to me that in this case the practitioners came closest to being dispassionate judges, and to the best medical determination (both before and after Terry Schiavo’s death) her mind had been utterly destroyed, leaving only a few basic animal instincts that weren’t even enough to keep her body alive on its own.

What is so disturbing is that it took so long for the proper response to that judgment to be carried out, and how effective those who would accurately be described as ‘the disinterested’ succeeded at imposing their own interests into the situation.

How long does it take to starve a person to death?

Does it make a difference, as some have declared here, if the person’s life is not worth living? You know, life unworthy of life.

In the Schiavo case, I was on the side of the parents, just because the husband, or his motives, struck me as more than dubious. Why didn’t he just divorce TS and leave her to her family’s custody? Perhaps I don’t know enough about the case–I didn’t follow it intensely–but the husband did forbid an autopsy, and had her remains cremated, which would obviously rule out exhumation. Why didn’t he just walk away from the whole thing? He had obviously started a new life with someone else.

Daniel, I’ve been following the fire story. It’s of personal(as well as general humanitarian) concern to me, because I have good friends in Victoria from whom I’ve not heard. I hope it ends soon.

Note to Ms. Mac Donald:

Giving a patient food and water is not medical treatment. It is the basic sustenance each of us needs to live, and none of us are competent to decide who among the innocent lives or dies. That said, this is not to say medical treatment should never be withheld from a patient at death’s door. Nature should be allowed to take its course, because that treatment only forestalls the inevitable.

However, to deny food and water to people like Terry Shiavo and Eluana Englaro is not forestalling the inevitable. Death is not in the wings, so the denial of basic sustenance is to deliberately kill them by dehydration or starvation, a cruel process that takes a number of painful days to bring about death.

Not so long ago, we all would have recongnized this for what it is, torture and murder. Now we pat ourselves on the back for our noble disinterest in putting the weak and helpless to death.

Another note to Ms. Mac Donald:

You suggest a couple of times that pro-lifers are hypocrites when it comes to the use of medical technology at both ends of life. I think this must stem from your ignorance of what the Catholic Church, the foremost opponent of the culture of death, teaches.

First, the Church teaches that all possible medical treatment need not be employed before letting a person die. OK to deny extra treatment, and in most cases probably should be denied if there is no hope of recovery. It is permissible to let nature take its course.

Second, the Church prohibits artificial conception, because nature is not allowed to take its course. One reason is the perversity that can result as in the Suleman case. The more important reason is that it reduces embryonic human beings to mere instruments to fulfill the desires of other human beings. If you understand why it is wrong to let one person “own” another for the satisfaction of his or her needs or desires, the Church’s prohibition to artifical conception should be sensible to you.

@Susan,

As the husband of a wife who has expressed to me that she, under no circumstances, wants to live in the condition Terri Schiavo was in prior to her death, I understand EXACTLY why he didn’t just walk away. If my in-laws (sadly passed, but still) wanted to keep her live in that state, I would do everything in my power to prevent them from doing so, even if I had “moved on”, out of both love for her and because it is my duty as a husband and a human to see to it that her wishes are carried out.

——–

@Bill Tingley
The moment the patient is not able to feed and hydrate themselves (or breath without the assistance of machinery), providing that food, water and air is most certainly medical treatment. (The treatment is in the provision of the material, not the nature of the material.) Death by starvation and dehydration would be cruel and painful if there was any consciousness present, but in these two cases, there was no consciousness present.

@Bill Tingley,
“If you understand why it is wrong to let one person ‘own’ another for the satisfaction of his or her needs or desires, the Church’s prohibition to artifical conception should be sensible to you.”

Perhaps you can explain more fully how using a rubber is an evil akin to chattel slavery…

Grant,

Both artificial conception and artifical CONTRAception instumentalize people, but if you read more carefully you’ll see I was talking only about the former and not the latter.

and because it is my duty as a husband and a human to see to it that her wishes are carried out.
Exactly. It was his duty, both as a husband and a man, to make sure that he carried out what he knew her wishes to be over the wishful thinking of parents unwilling to let go. The fact that he could have thrown his hands up and walked away from her shell of a body is what makes him more of a hero: he stuck around and made sure that he did what she told him to do. That’s precisely what made the GOP’s intervention so obscene: Congress and the President knew better than a husband and a team of doctors? Frist claims to diagnose her through video–ah, I’m just going to get angry again.
Anyway, Susan, what you are essentially saying is that in the event of a tragedy that leaves you unable to speak for yourself, you wish your husband would ignore your wishes and give you over to your parents who want to do precisely that wish you said you didn’t want. Oh, and do this while he takes off with his new girl. You sure about that? Isn’t this precisely the last thing he *needs* to do before he can view himself as free to start that new life?
And there *was* an autopsy. It showed her brain was gone, unable to be healed under any circumstances, and she couldn’t recognize anyone, which reveals all the claims such as “she is happier when we come in the room” for the rubbish they were. Your information on the case is extremely incorrect, I’m afraid, but I’m not surpised, given the misinformation the right was throwing around at the time.
(hoping html works throughout; apologies if not)

Grant:

The moment the patient is not able to feed and hydrate themselves (or breath without the assistance of machinery), providing that food, water and air is most certainly medical treatment.

Then explain how that is not the case with infants, quadraplegics, and others who lack limbs able to feed themselves.

Death by starvation and dehydration would be cruel and painful if there was any consciousness present, but in these two cases, there was no consciousness present.

Schiavo was certainly conscious, if not fully so. She could feel pain. I am glad we argree that deliberate deprivation of sustenance is cruel and painful.

“Then explain how that is not the case with infants, quadraplegics, and others who lack limbs able to feed themselves.”

I believe that the care to maintain these people is also medical care, in that sense. (That being said, I don’t believe that the level required for something to be “medical care” is a very high one. Putting on a band-aide is medical care…) Or, if you want to restrict the use of the term more, there is medical care in place the feeding tube (or ventilator) and that requires some training.

“Schiavo was certainly conscious, if not fully so. She could feel pain.”

Preface this by saying that given the nature of consciousness, this is a question that cannot be answered definitively in any particular case. That being said, given the massive loss of neurons and brain tissue in all areas of her brain, especially in the cerebral cortex, I believe that it the burden of proof on that issue lies with those who believe that she had any kind of consciousness.

“I am glad we argree that deliberate deprivation of sustenance is cruel and painful.”

Again, to someone with awareness of what is happening. I don’t believe it is so to someone who is brain dead or in an irreversible persistent vegetative state. It is unfortunate that the realities of the religious in the country has taken the alternative of painless euthanasia off the table (though I’m sure you disagree about that…)

Conscious != consciousness, Bill. Word check is necessary on your post, I am afraid, before you try to cleverly hoist Grant on any petard, his or others. Schiavo’s brain was nearly gone, as the autopsy revealed. Simply “being there” doesn’t mean she was in any way experiencing the world.

Thanks, Susan.

Eluana Englaro has died.

Grant:

I believe that the care to maintain these people is also medical care, in that sense. … Or, if you want to restrict the use of the term more, there is medical care in place the feeding tube (or ventilator) and that requires some training.

This distinction I made is commonsense. Medical care is not something you need in the ordinary course of living. Some people may never need it. However, we all need to eat and drink to stay alive. That is not medical care, even when some people need assistance.

Preface this by saying that given the nature of consciousness, this is a question that cannot be answered definitively in any particular case.

If so, Grant, this statement undercuts your entire case that follows …

Preface this by saying that given the nature of consciousness, this is a question that cannot be answered definitively in any particular case. That being said, given the massive loss of neurons and brain tissue in all areas of her brain, especially in the cerebral cortex, I believe that it the burden of proof on that issue lies with those who believe that she had any kind of consciousness.

The burden of proof? I think that would rest upon those who want to kill a living breathing human being. It is up to them to make the case that a person with a severely impaired brain is no longer fit for life and so must die.

It is unfortunate that the realities of the religious in the country has taken the alternative of painless euthanasia off the table (though I’m sure you disagree about that…)

I have longed believed that euthanasia should be illegal — even way back to my heathen days. The reason is simple. Who are we going to empower to make the decision that this person or that needs to be killed? I want no one in society to be authorized to make the decision, especially when I am at my most helpless, that MY life is no longer worth living and so I must be killed.

Torrentprime:

Schiavo’s brain was nearly gone, as the autopsy revealed. Simply “being there” doesn’t mean she was in any way experiencing the world.

Again her brain impairment is not the issue. The issue is that she was a living breathing human being until she was starved to death. She had a life, even if you deem it a life unworthy of life. Because nature would not accommodate, she had to be deliberately killed.

The reason I supported the parents in the Schiavo case was because it occured to me that they had hope. The progress with stem-cell research made me think that it was not out of the question that in a couple of decades or so, it might be possible to materially regenerate brain tissue.

This might in turn have made possible a significant return to some kind of functionality. Now I know that most of the person’s memories would be gone, they would be like a newborn child at best.

But read again what Donna B (#2) says above:

“He was not the son I knew before and he never would be again, yet I’ve come to love to person he is.”

This is a very natural reaction for a parent.

Think of this in Darwinian terms: The parent’s deepest instinctive interest is in the survival of the genes – Whatever or even whoever the child is or becomes – It is still their child no matter what.

For the sake of the parents I would have let Terri Schiavo live.

As for Terri’s own wishes: They were fulfilled – The Terri she was could not come back. A mostly-new brain would be a new ego.

Because nature would not accommodate, she had to be deliberately killed.

Nature did accommodate for Schiavo. When she was no longer given a feeding tube, she died naturally.

This distinction I made is commonsense. Medical care is not something you need in the ordinary course of living. Some people may never need it. However, we all need to eat and drink to stay alive.

I don’t believe it is as commonsensical as you propose (although this is a symantic argument, so we may just need to agree on a definition and figure it from there.) We all need to maintain the proper balance of water and minerals in our bodies to stay alive, too. But some people need kidney dialysis solely because of non-functioning kidneys. Hooking them up to a dialysis machine is medical care as much as hooking them up to a feeding tube is.

A better comparison is a quadriplegic who requires the use of a vent. We all need air to live. Providing them with a ventilator is “medical care” as much as providing that same person with a feeding tube is.

If so, Grant, this statement undercuts your entire case that follows …

Not really, because it merely notes the limitation of what we can know with certainty versus what we can believe with confidence. We cannot know with certainty whether someone else experiences consciousness, but we can believe with confidence that they do or do not by examining the structures of the organ in which consciousness is generated

The burden of proof? I think that would rest upon those who want to kill a living breathing human being. It is up to them to make the case that a person with a severely impaired brain is no longer fit for life and so must die.

Actually, as a legal question, I’m not sure who bears the burden of proof in Florida. In any event, if it was Mr. Schiavo, then he clearly bore his burden and his parents and everyone else could not establish any error in that finding that the burden was met. Further, the standard is not “who is fit for life” but, rather, what the wishes of the person whose care is under review. If you don’t want the plug to be pulled on you, great. But you don’t get to choose for anyone else.

In this case, against, it was established that Terri Schiavo would not wanted to continue to live like that. That is her moral choice, and the process is designed to implement that decision, even if her parents, the Republicans in Congress and George Bush disagree, because they have no right to impress THEIR view of morality on her decision.

Who are we going to empower to make the decision that this person or that needs to be killed? I want no one in society to be authorized to make the decision, especially when I am at my most helpless, that MY life is no longer worth living and so I must be killed.

We are going to empower you to decide the medical treatment that you want. Just as we do now. The only difference I’m proposing is that we not go through the farce of letting “nature take its course.”

As a point of information, did Terri Schiavo leave explicit written instructions that she did not wish to live in a vegetative state?

“Again her brain impairment is not the issue. The issue is that she was a living breathing human being until she was starved to death.”

The brain impairment is EXACTLY the issue, because it is only in the case of brain impairment of this type that the question arises whether the person would or would not want live-sustaining measures. The fact that YOU believe that we should do everything possible to continue the biological functioning cannot override Terri Schiavo’s opinion on the matter, because her opinion is the only one that counted.

“For the sake of the parents I would have let Terri Schiavo live.”

As much as I can empathize with the parents, and feel for their loss, Terri Shiavo was an adult, and as an adult, her parents had no more right to direct medical care against Terri’s wishes than did any Tom, Dick or Harry off the street.

Bill:

Without getting into a huge and unproductive argument with you, you should understand that the vast, vast majority of Americans do not subscribe to conservative Catholic morality. (I add the word “conservative” because most American Catholics don’t agree with it either. Though I understand it is the official position of the Church, there’s no reason that those who do not accept papal authority should accept the word of the Holy See as the “Catholic” position rather than the positions taken by more sensible practicing American Catholics.)

And further, most Americans do not think that things you believe to be self evident actually are (i.e., that Terri Schiavo was conscious, that withholding food and water from a person in a PVS is the same as, say, shooting a fully conscious person).

What I would therefore advise you (and, in fact, the leadership of your Church) is that while you have every right to choose not to withhold food and water from your spouse if she ever is in the circumstances that Ms. Schiavo was in, and that this may even be a laudable choice (indeed, on the merits of end of life issues, I actually have quite a bit of sympathy for some of the arguments that your Church leadership makes on this issue, especially the concern that relatives might pressure to put granny out of her misery when she would make the uncoerced choice to continue living), like on many issues, this is a matter for secular authorities to hash out and decide based on secular principles. Papal definitions of what does and doesn’t constitute “taking human life” may theoretically bind Catholics (although, as I noted, most American Catholics don’t actually think so!), but they are to be freely disregarded by the rest of us and do not carry any more weight than the pronouncements of the Dalai Lama, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the Ecumenical Patriarch, the President of the Quorum of the Twelve, or the leader of any other religious sect.

“As a point of information, did Terri Schiavo leave explicit written instructions that she did not wish to live in a vegetative state?”

She had no living will. The Court reached its decision based on testimony of about 20 people about what she would have wanted.

“Both artificial conception and artifical CONTRAception instumentalize people, but if you read more carefully you’ll see I was talking only about the former and not the latter.”

I didn’t see this post. Okay. Correction noted. But I still don’t see the connection between a test-tube baby and a slave.

I am a liberal, but I cannot describe how good it is to find a conservative website which represents what I always believed was the conservative philosophy. The traditional small government and libertarian right has always provided a wonderful counterpoint to us liberals, and I have always welcomed it.

Unfortunately, the takeover by the ridiculous religious right into the Republican Party has caused major damage to conservatism this country. The new Republican Party seems to be anti-reason, anti-science and totally committed to restricting individual liberty.

That remains the point on this particular issue. I am 64, and I have made it very clear, in writing, to my son that I reject extended attachments to machines to prolong an existence which would be anathema to me. I believe that is my most basic right as an individual human. I could not have influenced my birth, but I definitely want to control, as much as possible, how I leave.

In defense of Mr. Tingley, I accept his approach to this issue. It seems to me, as an ex-Roman Catholic, that he reflects quite accurately the position of his church. It is a position which I completely reject, but it is a very consistent position. Remember, the Roman church has always held a strong position against capital punishment.

Sorry to have gone on so long. We lefties have always been talky types.

Thanks to all of you for reawakening my faith in conservatism as a necessary counterpoint to our progressive desire for too much government.

Also thanks to Andrew Sullivan for linking here.

Richard York

Twenty people testified that Terri Schiavio told them she wouldn’t want to live in a vegetative state???? Doesn’t that strike you as an unusually high number of people who knew her thoughts on the subject? Who talks about this kind of stuff? I doubt I ever have. Dare I ask if the twenty people were all friends of the husband?

My only interest in this is that when one spouse appears eager to pull the plug on the other, I have to wonder if the motives for so doing are quite as noble as the plug-puller might want us to believe.

Grant Canyon,
Terri Shiavo was an adult, and as an adult, her parents had no more right to direct medical care against Terri’s wishes than did any Tom, Dick or Harry off the street.

You are thinking in terms of USA law (where you may well be right).
I am thinking in terms of Rational Darwinian Agents.
I don’t consider the ego to be the most important part of Man.

Daniel: then you are elevating the wishes of a parent over the wishes of the person in question, and the person’s spouse. I don’t mean this in an argumentative fashion, but, frankly, your position is terrifying. A parent’s hope for a hypothetical future cure shouldn’t trump a marriage vow , nor one’s own wishes. You want a parent to swoop in and override an adult’s (and her spouse’s) control over their very body? Keep a body alive long after the brain is dead solely over a dream that “someday” a child could be healed? You would not have “let” her live; you would have forced her to. And Terri’s wishes extend to her body as well: she has to the right to let her body die, not just her ego.
Ah, Bill, you’re changing things on me, probably because your ground dropped away from you. Before you wanted consciousness. Now, all you need is “living and breathing?” And don’t you dare try to make my opinions or feelings the issues here (“even if you deem it a life unworthy of life”); attempting to demonize me is weak sauce. The issue is what Terri Schiavo herself wanted. In the absence of her being able to speak for herself or a living will, her spouse speaks for her. The Republicans (the limited government party) rushed a bill through Congress and had the President sign it to force governmental involvement at the highest level and interfered with the most sacred and private of decisions after years of “hope” and tests and medical decisions and lawsuits. It was an obscene intrusion of the state into the private life of a couple.

Susan, so now the very existence of the people who testified at trial is proof of what, a conspiracy? So the proof is anti-proof? And he wasn’t “eager” to pull the plug on her. How dare you characterize his motives so callously? You seem to determined to view every fact (and you didn’t acknowledge that you had the “no autopsy” thing wrong, so I’m wondering how hard you are clinging to the conspiracy meme) as some deep-seated plot to rip her from the earth. He spent years working with her after she went into the coma, he sued the doctor who didn’t catch her bulimia, and even though/after there was a DNR in place, he didn’t ask to take the tube out until five years after he stopped treatment. Why do you want him to be the villain so badly?

Daniel,
I don’t consider the ego to be the most important part of Man.
Then you can direct your own care accordingly. Respectfully, I’d prefer you not be in charge of making decisions for me.

And Bill, you have another item wrong on the withholding of water (“I am glad we argree (sic) that deliberate deprivation of sustenance is cruel and painful.”), which is how we allow these people to pass. “However, numerous studies have shown that for terminally ill patients who choose to die, deaths by dehydration are generally peaceful, and not associated with suffering, when supplemented with adequate pain medication.” Citations available on the wiki page. This is why it’s so dangerous when people without the training or education to speak on the matter do so on the nightly news, or, say, from the floor of the Senate.

torrentprime.

One of the problems I have with the US constitution is its excessive individualism. There is no place in it for the rights of families.

Yes I would override the individual’s wishes sometimes. But I am not a US citizen, and I am not bound by the US constitution.

What connects these two cases is the defiance of Nature. What Terri Schiavo might have wanted is not really relevant. The fact is she was brain dead, the person she had been was gone. Her brain could no longer process hunger and thirst nor act to relieve them. Her body needed to follow her brain in death. Sooner rather than later is best both for her and the rest of us. When there is no hope of recovery then acceptance and the rites of death are in order. Let Nature take its course. The octoplets however are a crime against Nature that should never have been allowed to occur. A single woman with deranged mother syndrome aided and abetted by medical professionals. A womb designed for one or two at most encouraged and supported to gestate eight. Humans were not meant to bear litters. Why else are natural multiple births so rare? Will those poor babies ever have a normal life? Will they ever be productive members of society? Will the state (i.e. all of us) have to subsidize their care? This constitutes in vitro abuse and there ought to be a law. Their mother is unable to care for the six she already has. What gives her the right to add another eight children to those she can’t care for and possibly disable them for life on top of it. She is a narcissistic abuser of her children and should lose custody of all of them and be in jail for endangering the welfare of minors. Whoever the “medical professionals” were who helped her achieve this disgusting reproductive distinction should go to jail with her.

<>

That is about as succinct, sensible and unassailable (and most impressively, non-judgmental) appraisal of this situation as one is likely to find. Kudos.

Torrentprime, my profoundest apologies for not acknowledging that I was worng, wrong, wrong, wrong, about the autopsy!!! There, have I abased myself sufficiently? As I said, I didn’t know much about the case. It just struck me as peculiar that the husband seemed to be so eager for the plug to be pulled. But no doubt he’s a secular saint, and everyone who testified that Terri didn’t want to live as a vegetable had deep knowledge of her wishes.

Seriously, the most striking thing about this case was how both sides used it to promote an agenda.

Susan, the sad thing is that you view the people who want to protect the rights of an individual, and a married couple, to make life and death decisions for each other after due review from doctors, without interference from the government, as an “agenda.” Yeah, that’s pretty nefarious right there.
Couple that with your non-stop questioning the motives of the husband… “just because the husband, or his motives, struck me as more than dubious.” You don’t know his motives. That’s the point. You are an outsider, daring to question his life and his wife’s life. A court already did that for years, along with doctors and testimony, and this was after he had a court appointed to decide what his wife would want. Then you suggested he should abandon his wife to her parents, which would in effect go against what his wife would want. Then you incorrectly stated that he forbade an autopsy. Then you called into question the number of witnesses the husband had. Then you called it odd that Terri would have discussed the matter with her friends (“Who talks about this kind of stuff? I doubt I ever have.” Your comments here notwithstanding, I suppose.) Then you called into question, again, the husband’s motives for doing the whole thing in the first place. How dare Michael Schiavo stand by his wife in the face of political grandstanding and clueless commenters? And I’ve already established a timeline that shows he was anything but eager to pull the plug, yet you keep using the word.
The only one who seems to have an agenda is you.

Daniel – Michael Schiavo wasn’t Terri’s family?

Hypo for you: what if the father wanted to go along with Michael but the mother wanted to keep the body alive? Then what?

Majority rules in that case, I guess.

My point was merely that if her parents were willing to assume the burden and expense of her care, why not let them?

Susan,

The last line of your comment regarding both sides using Schiavo to promote an agenda is not accurate. The pro-lifers were on Fox every day to promote life for life’s sake. Nothing about the quality of life or the person’s wishes. Just the principle of life at any cost. As far as the husband being eager to pull the plug. That’s really not true. We can argue about who pushed an agenda, but one fact remains: None of the pain on the part of the parents or the husband was any of our business. Decisions like this are made in this country every day, without Fox and the other cable outlets covering it incessantly. And, the fact that our former President and his enablers on the right inserted themselves into a very private and painful matter should scare all of us, pro or con.

@Susan

The twenty people were the total number who testified. I don’t know the breakdown as to pro/con or what the content of their testimony was.

The other thing that could be important to consider is the fact that the husband put the decision in the hands of a guardian ad litem, who represented Terri’s interest during the hearings. The guardian and the court concluded that Terri would not want to exist in this state.

torrentprime
Daniel – Michael Schiavo wasn’t Terri’s family?

Yes, legally. And above all where their children are concerned.

But Darwinian evolution tells us that inclusive fitness has been selected for, over millions of years. Consequently it is likely that “blood really is thicker than water”.

My problem is to achieve the result that is optimum from the point of an RDA (Rational Darwinian Agent):

Who is most likely to have the RDA’s best interests at heart? – Given the RDA is themself incapacitated and reduced to the status of a virtual minor? – I trust the DNA.

And as I said “Terri” herself cannot be brought back. A mostly-new brain would not be “Terri”.

Hypo for you: what if the father wanted to go along with Michael but the mother wanted to keep the body alive? Then what?

Then the judge must decide with the wisdom of Solomon. Me, I trust the mother.

The father is never certain he is the father. DNA “knows” this fact.
DNA does not know about DNA testing.

Also because of inclusive fitness, the judge should always count the opinions of other close relatives.

Any siblings and children are as close as parents, genetically. One could probably come up with a mathematical formula.

Susan,
My point was merely that if her parents were willing to assume the burden and expense of her care, why not let them?
Again, there is nothing “merely” about your points. You have “merely” called into question every decision this man ever made, when it’s not your place to do so and you have admitted more than once your own ignorance about the details of the case.
If someone wandered into your home, turned on some TV cameras, openly proclaimed ignorance of any details of your life and then questioned your decisions, your (for example), your parenting, or your skills as a wife, or how you handled your parents end-of-life matters, or how you disposed of a will after the death of a loved one, or how you dealt with the injury or death of a child, and then someone asked, “Why doesn’t she just walk away and let me decide how to handle it? Wouldn’t it be easier?” The proper response would be, “How dare you?” Michael said and proved in a court that he knew what Terri wanted. To walk away and surrender her to her parents’ fantasy wouldn’t be “letting them;” it would be violating Terri, her body and her memory. He (apparently) loved her too much for that. What’s terrifying is that you don’t seem to see the violence to the family and the privacy implicit in your questioning of his decision-making right.

Daniel: “One could probably come up with a mathematical formula.” One could, but since as a practical matter this has veered into hilarity, we’ll leave it at that. The judge may take the opinions of other close relatives into account when acting as a guardian, but a cousin who hates you (or stands to inherit!) won’t have one’s best interests at heart, while a lifelong friend could very well. Mindless reliance on gene-sharing won’t get you any closer to a true result than ignoring the wishes of the family.

I didn’t say cousin. And I would always defer to parents except when they are divided. Because they are the one’s who invested the time and resources to bring up the child. Quite simply they own the stake.

I just scrolled through the comments but I didn’t see even one that addresses the 14 artifically induced children borne by Ms. Suleman. I find this very strange indeed.

OK Maybe more like a points scoring system. So that you could take into account things like: What if the parents were absent or what if the older brother brought up the child. What if the parents are dead. Perhaps built on Bayesian lines.

Spouses might not need to have zero input. But they would only be one of the stakeholders. The guiding principle though is that there are multiple stakeholders and close genetic relatives count.

Individualism is way too simplistic. Genes control what? More than half of our behaviour?.

carolyn c
:

carolyn c

I just scrolled through the comments but I didn’t see even one that addresses the 14 artifically induced children borne by Ms. Suleman. I find this very strange indeed.

Feel free to make the first comment carolyn c.
Unstrange us.

Can I point out that the Catechism of the Catholic Church disagrees with the absolutists who were demanding Eluana Englaro be kept “alive” forever? It says, “Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘over-zealous’ treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected” (2278).

Torrentprime: Why is it “not my place” to question Michael Schiavo’s decisions, when you yuorself question the decisions made by her parents? Or are some matters off-limits for discussion: no one dare question Michael Schiavo’s motives or knowledge? You wouldn’t happen to BE Michael Schiavo, would you? You certainly are a passionate defender of his. And I’m happy to know he proved what Terri wanted. Can you document that?

Torrentprime: Why is it “not my place” to question Michael Schiavo’s decisions, when you yuorself question the decisions made by her parents? Or are some matters off-limits for discussion: no one dare question Michael Schiavo’s motives or knowledge? You wouldn’t happen to BE Michael Schiavo, would you? You certainly are a passionate defender of his. And I’m happy to know he proved what Terri wanted. Can you document that?

“The issue is that she was a living breathing human being until she was starved to death.”

No, she wasn’t. Human tissue != human being. It’s necessary, but not sufficient — and it’s only ‘necessary’ because our technology is so limited. Eventually we’ll have human beings that aren’t made of meat.

But I’m guessing you make the same sorts of arguments in abortion debates, insisting that an eight-celled tissue cluster somehow deserves the same consideration as a toddler.

I’m speculating, now, but I’ll bet you don’t disapprove of organ donations after brain death. Am I right about that?

“You wouldn’t happen to BE Michael Schiavo, would you? You certainly are a passionate defender of his.”

I’m a passionate defender of him, too, and not because I am him, but because I believe he was right.

The decision that Schiavo would want to die was made by a judge, not by her husband. And, there are tons and tons of decisions on the matter for the curious. Michael Schiavo had nothing invested in this except to do what he thought his wife would have wanted. He was offered large sums of money to “give” her to his parents. Instead, he chose to do what he thought was right. That made him a villain, apparently. I’m sympathetic to the parents wishing to hold on to their daughter. However, the reality of adulthood is that parents don’t get to make decisions for their child anymore. The real travesty in this case was the attempts of outsiders to use this case to score cheap political points.

“One of the problems I have with the US constitution is its excessive individualism. There is no place in it for the rights of families.”

Because ‘families’ are not considered to have rights over individuals in our society; thus, there was no need to make provisions for them.

If you would wish to establish such rights, what would they be? And what protections would individuals have against the authority of their families? Protecting the individual against the authority of the system was once a major component of American thought.

I understand Caledonian. I compare the West to traditional Asia. We in the West are developing atomised societies. People in Europe have stopped breeding we are dying out. Everyone lives for self.

In traditional Asia, family has real power and prestige. It is an alternative center of loyalty. People marry, have kids, because it is family duty.

There are other flaws too I think. Individuals are frail vulnerable, alone in anonymous cities. There is a natural drift to statism and socialism. The State has become the substitute superfamily. It provides the welfare. Government is choking our creativity in it’s bureacratic, if well-meaning, embrace.

I fear radical individualism is doomed. It won’t last out this century. Man is not an atom.

Caledonian
Eventually we’ll have human beings that aren’t made of meat.

Uh! Oh! Careful with this…

@Daniel Dare
Different strokes…

I, for one, find the “traditional Asian” system to be horrific. In such systems, there is a natural drift to statism and socialism as the State takes over the role as the superfamily, demanding the power, prestige and loyalty which that society has inculcated as being owed to family. Obediance to the State becomes not a matter of conscience, but family duty.

Only the individual, freed from atavistic bonds to family “loyalty” is free to truly prosper. The other system is horrifically inefficient by pressing, through the falacy of “family duty”, choices on the individual in which he is not interested and for which he is not suited, solely due to the prejudices and misguided ideas of family.

Grant Canyon
Only the individual, freed from atavistic bonds to family “loyalty” is free to truly prosper.

Yes, the “traditional Asian” system is indeed horrific for the individual, but this is what is driving Chinese civilisation since a few millenia and it may very well outlast our own “western” civilisation.
The so-called “communist China” is just imperial bureaucracy painted red.

Terri Schiavo was autopsied following legal declaration of death. You can also see the CT scan results in the Wiki article about her. Both the CT scans and the autopsy showed that more than half of the neurons were gone from the brain, including the regions of the brain that are the seat of consciousness. In other words, the pro-life people were way off base. Terry was dead long before the case gained public attention in 2005.

Bill Frist deceptive comments on this issue is what cost him his credibility as a medical professional and, eventually, his Senate seat.

It is likely that regenerative medicine will allow for regeneration of brains from this kind of damage in the future (the basis of future revival from cryo-preservation). However, such regeneration in her case would make for a “new” person instead of Terry Schiavo as she existed prior to her medical calamity. You will note that none of the pro-life people ever discussed the possibility of such regenerative bio-medicine.
In any case, such a technology is sufficient far enough in the future (30-40 years) that Terry Schaivo would have had to be cryo-preserved into to take advantage of it. Of course, none of the pro-life people stepped up to the plate with an offer to cryo-preserve her.

If the pro-life people were truly interested in resolving these issues in favor of continued life, they would support R&D efforts to develop a robust regenerative capability as well as efforts such as SENS. They do not. This strongly suggests that they are more interested in simply jerking people around and making them suffer for gratuitous reasons instead of actually solving these kinds of biomedical problems in such a manner that people would choose to go on living.

This is why the pro-life people have no positive contribution to resolving these kinds of problems. They are not worth listening to.

“One of the problems I have with the US constitution is its excessive individualism. There is no place in it for the rights of families.”

This is incorrect. Parents are assumed to have legal rights as guardians over their children until they reach the age of majority.

“Yes, the ‘traditional Asian’ system is indeed horrific for the individual, but this is what is driving Chinese civilisation since a few millenia and it may very well outlast our own ‘western’ civilisation.”

I know. I was just drawing a counterpoint to the statements by Danial Dare as a way of showing that what we have here are two different ways of organizing society. I don’t believe that either has complete superiority to the other (or to any of the others which exist) in any absolute sense, but that each have benefits and detriments that the others do not. I know which I prefer, though.

The system that we have may very well outlast the other family-based systems or they may both continue on into the future.

Guys, you should be aware that those family-based Asian civilizations such as the Chinese now have a lower birth rate than our “individualist” loving U.S.A.

“Individuals are frail vulnerable…”

Perhaps we should make ourselves more robust. I believe this is the central purpose of transhumanism.

This is incorrect. Parents are assumed to have legal rights as guardians over their children until they reach the age of majority.

It’s not enough kurt9. They move away. They break links. They form nuclear families, the old parents are left to the nursing homes and the retirement villages. The wives work, they have small families. Childcare is expensive. I am talking about the secular blue states in particular.

If it wasn’t for the Christian traditionalists, what would be the birthrate of white Americans? Same as Europe I bet.

You can’t survive with a birthrate of 1.4 children per female.

Christian traditionalists favor stronger family. So does traditional Asia.

Without the family, in the end you have individuals and Leviathan.

In the end there are only two possible solutions:

Either the family or the state will control the birthrate.

Those societies that don’t favor one of these two options will disappear.

In the end there are only two possible solutions:

Either the individual or the state will control the birthrate.

Those societies that don’t favor one of these two options will disappear.

Dream on Grant.

Individuals will always have better things to do. Travel, careers, the latest plasma TVs, whatever.

Only immortal institutions like the family or the state can impose the discipline.

Could be a religion I suppose.
Islam?
Fanatical Fundamentalist Darwinians? ROFLMAO

If it wasn’t for the Christian traditionalists, what would be the birthrate of white Americans?

How did that next-to-last word get in there? What possible relevance could it have to this discussion?

Both America and Europe have so many people who want to get into their societies that they could give up reproduction entirely and still continue as societies by passing their ideals down to generations of immigrants. (Of course nothing like that will happen as many people’s emotional drives to reproduce are still effective, and thus we have a massive oversupply of reproduction in pretty much every society.) Any society is necessarily a ship of Theseus anyway as its members are born and die. Genetic continuity doesn’t noticeably add to, and certainly isn’t a prerequisite for, social continuity.

Ideals and values are not bound to the genes, as the US-raised children of “traditional Asians” prove.

The whites represent the most deeply secularised population, most directly comparable to the Europeans.

But in the end secularization will proabably spread to everyone. Asia is secularizing. China and India already have made population control the business of the state. I don’t think we will hold 2.1 for long without making it somebody’s policy.

And another thing. It think there’s a real possibility of a population crash in the developing world later this century as the oil runs out.

Starvation may be unavoidable.

And here’s a third point: immigration.
How many immigrants will USA and Europe accept next year?

Anyone know how high unemployment is going to be in the OECD?

In the end there are only two possible solutions:

Those societies that don’t favor one of these two options will disappear.

I suggest a third: SENS.

I think it would actually be easier and cheaper than trying to push people into having kids they don’t want.

You know kurt9 you and I are on the same page on this.

It’s just that it is a bit more speculative so I don’t go on about it.

And you know it’s not that hard to make people have kids.

All you do is licence contraception to those who can prove they’ve had 2 children.
A state that has a one child policy can have a two child policy just as easily.

“All you do is licence contraception to those who can prove they’ve had 2 children.”

Of course. We all must do our duty for the Fatherland.

Back in ancient times when I studied ecology in college we learned that the birth rate of a sexually reproducing population is controlled by the number of females. Reduce the males and the remaining males can still impregnate all the females, reduce the females and the birth rates start to drop, reduce the females further and birth rates crash. Technologies that allow sex identification and selective abortion of female fetuses are increasingly available to traditional societies that favor males. Its already starting to happen in many countries notably China. These societies are commiting genocide against themselves by eliminating a large portion of the next generation of females.

Dana you are right but a world without females would be unbearable. There would be no light in our darkness.

Also there is the economic counterargument. You make females that scarce and they become very valuable. People start to kidnap them from villages and give dowries or brideprices. Soon there is a vast incentive to have daughters.

All you do is licence contraception to those who can prove they’ve had 2 children.

Then you have a black market in contraceptive products. Also, guys that do not want kids would simply go overseas to get vasectomies. Thats what I would do.

The Russians have a proverb: For every rule there are 100 ways to get around it.

Infertility is NOT god-given. It can happen to anyone and for many reasons

It can happen after a miscarriage due to a too-agressive D&C.

No one judges all the mothers who get knocked up young, naturally, as ferociously as this woman. Sure she has problems, but don’t say infertility is god-given and those who suffer it deserve some higher moral standard when it comes to having kids. Millions of people have kids for crazy reasons in bad circumstances.

Children are not considered to be individuals in our legal system.

I consider this abhorrent, but that’s not the point here. Our system doesn’t grant power over individuals to their families except in very, very limited circumstances.

How would we do about defining ‘rights of the family’? What sorts of rights?

It always baffled me in the Schiavo case just how many people could doggedly ignore the actual legal and ethical issues at stake. At the time the case became a public cause, her husband wasn’t even “in charge” of what happened in any case, yet people still blather on about his conflicts of interest as if he could decide if she lived or died at a whim.

And whether you agree with the court’s ruling or not, can’t people at least acknowledge that issues like this sometimes need to be decided by courts (how else can we resolve matters of fact, by pistol dueling?) and that it’s important that there be some sort of due process and force behind court rulings?

Or the issue of whether feeding/hydration tubes are life support. Whatever you think about this, by law, they were considered so in Florida (and honestly, anyone who’s actually seen them in use and knows what sort of care, invasiveness and upkeep they require would at least not be so glib as to call it merely feeding/hydrating as if she were denied a plate of food or a cup of water).

Whatever you think about how the law should have been, don’t you at least agree that when we DO establish legal systems designed to safeguard important interests, that we should follow them, rather than deciding to do so or not based on media attention? If abortion became illegal tomorrow, would anti-abortionists be happy if we simply ignored that law whenever a pro-legal abortion person felt strongly that we should?

I can tell you that one effect of the Terry Schiavo case was to radically increase the interest in living wills and durable power of attorney forms. Washington State actually ran out of these forms the month following the Terry Schiavo case. This alone was a very positive outcome of this unfortunate situation.

Of course those of us interested in cryo-preservation have been quite familiar with these legal formalities for years given that they are necessary for effective cryo-preservation.

Caledonian, sorry I’ve been busy on another thread.

Well, how about the right to opt out of a large part of social security system and administer their own collective welfare system? And being granted major tax concessions to enable them to do it. I think a lot of larger extended families could do it. Wealthier ones too.

The ability to tax-exempt all sorts of intrafamily economic transactions.

The goal is always to encourage the formation of co-operative extended family groups. So that they remove themselves from the wider state-centric institutions.

Individuals could register themselves as a member of a particular family that would function as a collective. How they administer that could be decided democratically. They would have to hold regular family councils. They would have to prove genuine family relationship by marriage or descent or adoption, and it ought to be “opt in” maybe for a fixed contract period. Parents could act on behalf of minors.

It’s like you are setting up a extra level of democratic government. You have individuals<families<local<state<federal. The powers would be drawn from the other levels. Families could be less geographically based so that your cousin in another state could still be a member of the same family.

The goal is unashamedly to encourage the formation of a different model of society than that which now exists in the USA and the rest of the West.

Purely for discussion – this is not a manifesto.

Sounds like polyamory.

If we didn’t limit the growth of the system to only fairly closely related individuals, say 3-4 generations, it would become a clan-based system. But I wanted to be sure that the genetic connection was real enough, so that we have a social structure, which is actually backed up by the full power of inclusive fitness. This is Darwinian layer to society.

The people in a family pretty much compare to a stone-age tribe.

I have an idea for increasing the birth-rate. Allow those adults who are willing to have kids to enter into polyamorous marriages. The benefit of this is more adults to support the kids through their economic productivity and just spending time with the kids. This would also be attractive to the participating adults because they can have sex with more than one partner.

I don’t think it would work for me kurt9. I am a one woman guy.

But my concept is inspired by the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. It’s what we evolved for, mostly in the stone age.

I am re-reading my copy of Nick Wade’s “Before the Dawn”. I’m at the part about the Bonobos, a primate species in Africa similar to that of the chimpanzees. The example of the Bonobos suggest that a society based on polyamory could possibly be stable and non-violent. Any thoughts on this?

As far as I know, most current and recorded stone-age societies are not like that.

I’ve heard there are groups like this today. Google is your friend.