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And Terry Schaivo, with 75% of her brain gone, no hope More

And Terry Schaivo, with 75% of her brain gone, no hope

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  • While I'm not for euthanasia (youth in asia?), the two are very different cases. He's a normal adult that they found out had hardly any brain tissue. Shiavo was braindead (no brain activity) in a coma that she hadn't woken from for years.
    • While I'm not for euthanasia (youth in asia?), the two are very different cases. He's a normal adult that they found out had hardly any brain tissue. Shiavo was braindead (no brain activity) in a coma that she hadn't woken from for years.

      Depends on your definition of "woken"- she looked plenty awake to me in that video of her on CNN. Looked of course being different than WAS- but the point being that the evidence used to argue for her death was and is questionable. Every one of those doctors would say t
    • ...I probably saw the same video mh42 saw, and I saw a pretty sick woman who could recognize people and had a little spark in the eyes. Personally, I think those demons just slap killed her because they dig on death and there's a certain mindset out there that supports suchlike. they starved and dehydrated that poor woman to death, and it took days and days. Freaking most hideous thing I ever saw cheered on in the western world.

      Ever really starve, as in no food, no way to get any, have it go on a long time,
      • What I remember is she recognized visual and audible stimuli. She couldn't tell one person from another, had there been a dog in the room I suspect she couldn't have discerned it from a person.

        Somehow I don't think you'll feel any better knowing that the people who removed her feeding tube probably wanted to end her life with some combination of drugs that would end her consciousness if she had any left, then stop her heart. The law wouldn't let them however.

        Were there no men around during your winter of
        • What I remember is she recognized visual and audible stimuli. She couldn't tell one person from another, had there been a dog in the room I suspect she couldn't have discerned it from a person.

          That's still "not a coma", which is why I brought it up to begin with. A person in a coma can't react *at all*. Any recognition of stimuli suggests a path for retraining other parts of the brain, according to the occupational therapists, but an MRI was enough to condemn her.
          • As I understand it, there's also a third state, the vegetative state. If a person can no longer be conscious due to brain injury, they may not always appear to be unconscious, but it's appearances only. A small bird will track a bright blinking object or respond to voices, that doesn't mean it is self-aware. People need to be self-aware to be conscious, don't they?
            • As I understand it, there's also a third state, the vegetative state. If a person can no longer be conscious due to brain injury, they may not always appear to be unconscious, but it's appearances only. A small bird will track a bright blinking object or respond to voices, that doesn't mean it is self-aware. People need to be self-aware to be conscious, don't they?

              Yes, but the big point isn't whether or not she was self-aware at this stage in her recovery- it was the possibility of progressing in that rec
        • They are just order followers. Her parents offered to care for her on their nickle and were *refused*. That's heartless and demonic in my book. Her husband didn't care it seems, in that situation he could have gotten an annulment, and let her parents take over as guardian, nope, not good enough, had to off her. And the cries to off her were loud and clear, I read them all over the net, the same folks who just love third trimester abortions it seems.

          And BTW, I am consistent and not a hypocrite, I am against
        • Were there no men around during your winter of starvation to take you in and not let you starve?

          I don't know about zogger's situation, I do know he failed to address this directly, so I will.

          Every year in the United States, some 4 million people die of starvation right before our eyes. Some are due to being too far out in the wilds in a hard winter (it's a big country- there are plenty of "off the grid" places to hide). Some are in our inner cities, and just for whatever reason slip through the cracks.
  • This guy was able to, among other things, have sex, hold down a job, and get to medical appointments on time.

    Whereas Terry Schiavo was unable to do more than sub-Frankenstein grunts. [blogspot.com]

    The percentages, while interesting, obviously do not highlight than some portions of the brain are more important than others, and that a slowly evolving condition is quite a different beast than major trauma brought on by a suicide attempt.
    • This guy was able to, among other things, have sex, hold down a job, and get to medical appointments on time.

      With a good deal of help- the original injury happened when he was an infant after all, and the shunt removed when he was 14. Given enough time, stroke victims such as this WILL recover- but sometimes that time is measured in decades, not months or years.

      Whereas Terry Schiavo was unable to do more than sub-Frankenstein grunts.

      So does any infant. So did you, 30+ years ago. I rather doubt anyb
  • Aside from the article headline's "Brainless civil servant..." being a motherlode of joke opportunities, I won't go there and will just say that that the "no hope" mantra was probably more intended for the pro-life movement than Terry. It wasn't so much about defeating her as defeating meddling Christians.
    • That is, no one knew if she could get better or not, but the secular left had to sound confident in the negative anyways, to try to win the political battle.
      • And actually, plenty of stroke occupational therapists at the time were mentioning the fact that patients DO learn to use other portions of their brain- and were all shouted down as idiots....
        • In Mrs. Schiavo's defense... this guy is a bureaucrat. Even with 98% of his brain gone, he's still more than equipped for the task.
    • Ah, where you see, my point is a direct refutation of one of the main claims of the pro-euthanasia movement at the time; that a person with such a devastating brain injury could not possibly *EVER* recover, no matter how many decades you kept them alive on machines.

      And yet here we have a man who survived such an injury as an infant, was given proper medical care and attention to reeducation, and ended up a somewhat productive member of society (arguably).

      Though I'd certainly agree that this *also* gives c

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