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Biotech

Journal Mike Hawk's Journal: An honest question 24

Journal by Mike Hawk
Surfing the journals today I came across a post that mentioned that women in a so-called "persistent vegetative state" continue to menstruate. This seems rather obvious but it got me thinking...

To those of you were for removing the late Mrs. Shiavo's feeding tube: Would you feel the same way if she was 8 months pregnant?

A woman is ruled to be in a PVS after 5 months in a coma. She was 3 months pregnant when she was struck in the head by a thief and she is in the 8th month now. The baby is a boy of healthy weight with no complications. Her husband has decided he wants her feeding tube removed (the only life-sustaining device necessary for her condition) for reasons he has declined to state publicly, and there is no living will containing her wishes. Her parents are willing to pay to support her indefinitely. A local judge has ruled that the feeding tube is to be removed. Do you support this decision and why or why not?

I don't actually expect any honest answers, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
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An honest question More

An honest question

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  • About ten years ago a gal in a coma did match some of the circumstances in your thought experiment. She did bring her baby to term. The child was reported to have been born healthy, IIRC. I don't however remember a split among her family. I don't remember if she had a living will. I don't remember if she was unplugged from life support afterwards.

    Now why would you be surprised by an honest answer. Some people are honest you know.

    Honestly, once consciousness is gone, with no hope of it returning, t

    • I heard Jerry Falwell call him an adulterer, or a bigamist. That seemed pretty unfair.

      adultery : voluntary sexual intercourse between a married man and someone other than his wife [m-w.com]
      I had heard that Michael had two children by the gal he was living with, so the term seems spot on. There's a difference (although widely unrecognized here on Slashdot) between "unfair" and "me no like".

      He was like a bigamist while acting married to someone else while still keeping his wife.

      Mr Schiavo was offered a million d

    • Now why would you be surprised by an honest answer. Some people are honest you know.

      You entirely failed to answer the question. This is why I didn't expect an honest answer. Your situation (as you explain it " gal in a coma did match some of the circumstances ") has little to do with my hypothetical or, if it did, you forgot. ("to have been born healthy, IIRC. I don't however remember a split among her family. I don't remember if she had a living will. I don't remember if she was unplugged from life s

      • Would you feel the same way if she was 8 months pregnant?

        If there is someone to love, and take care of the child, keeping the mother's body alive makes sense. Otherwise, it seems creepy -- like those people who have their pets stuffed and mounted, after they die.

        Her husband has decided he wants her feeding tube removed ... for reasons he has declined to state publicly ...
        Her parents are willing to pay to support her indefinitely...

        You say that the husband didn't explain himself. But you

        • So your answer is that the rule of a judge overrides the fact that keeping her alive "makes sense". Excellent, now I have two of the answers I was hoping for.
          • You know that is not what I said. You know that is not what I meant.

            I've called you on this before.

            It makes you look desperate, and insecure when your need to "win" an argument is so strong that you stoop to misrepresenting the other person's views.

            • Then explain how I misrepresented it. You broke apart the hypothetical inappropriately then you spouted several different opinions based on sentences that should have been treated as one idea. I put them back together to match what I wrote. Your last one was that a judge made a ruling and that you would be comfortable with it, even though earlier you said that it would make sense to keep the woman alive. If there is another way to parse that information I'd love to hear it.

              Strange that you feel like

              • Then explain how I misrepresented it.

                Simple. You wrote:

                I put them back together to match what I wrote.

                You revealed, the other day, that you have the notion that entire world can be reduced to binary terms. You should learn the story of the Procrustean [mythweb.com] bed. [wikipedia.org] You edit what others write, to shoehorn it to fit into your narrow-minded, binary world view.

                I put several significant qualifications on whether keeping the dead woman's body alive "made sense". Your view of truth is binary valued.

                • If the mother had no chance of recovering consciousness, and, if there was someone to love and care for the child, then it made sense to keep the mother's body alive long enough for the child to be born

                  Thats not what you wrote at all because you also wrote that, "When in Rome, do what the Romans do. If the local laws gives the widower ownership of the body, and he wishes to have the tube pulled, in spite of his inlaws offer, then they are basically out of luck." Which means that all of that will be pus
                  • Yes. I wrote about Rome, And yes, in order to fulfill your preconceived notions you have put a wild spin on what I said to reach another of your bizarre, wild conclusions.

                    Thats not what you wrote at all because you also wrote that, "When in Rome, do what the Romans do. If the local laws gives the widower ownership of the body, and he wishes to have the tube pulled, in spite of his inlaws offer, then they are basically out of luck." Which means that all of that will be pushed aside because a judge says s

                    • Since only a tiny bit of what your wrote is on-topic, I'll hold my comment to that.

                      You said the widower made the decision to remove the tube. You said the parents wanted to keep her corpse alive.You said the judge ruled that the tube should be removed. Now if you didn't mean that the judge ruled that whether the tube should remain, or be removed, was the widower's decision, you should have expressed yourself more clearly. I refuse to let you accuse me of misinterpreting you if you simply failed to expre

                    • Notably absent from this discussion are your own views. Although you entitled your JE "an honest question" you haven't offered your own views.

                      In direct contradiction to your title, your purpose was far from honest. As you have admitted, you started the JE for the highly dishonest purpose of soliciting views from your political opponents that would bolster your preconceived notions.

                      You are asking your correspondents to take a stand on an emotionally charged issue. For any normal, decent person, who

  • What if Terri Schaivo had had a living will, which spelled out explicitly that she did not want to be kept alive through a feeding tube after entering a persistant vegitative state? There would be no legal controversy then, no he said/they said. The judicial system has upheld the legal principle of living wills. But the controversy would still exist. It would still be, in the eyes of many, murder to let her die, or perhaps in this hypothetical case, assisted suicide.

    So my question is, are living wills mora
    • What if Terri Schaivo had had a living will, which spelled out explicitly that she did not want to be kept alive through a feeding tube after entering a persistant vegitative state?

      Not to be dismissive, but this isn't an interesting question. A person's last request should be honored so long as it doesn't infringe on other person's rights to life, liberty and/or persuit of happyness.

      At what point should the government determine and implement our medical care needs?

      At no point.
      • A person's last request should be honored so long as it doesn't infringe on other person's rights to life, liberty and/or persuit of happyness.

        So when you say the government should determine a person's medical care "at no point," you really mean, at no point except if there is a fetus in the person's womb?

        That just puts us back into the argument at what point does a fetus become a person. Viability? Conception? Birth? I don't have a firm opinion on that question. I just don't know.

        What I do know is that
        • I'm assuming that the judge did his best to determine the woman's wishes, weighting her husband's opinion on the subject heavily, as he is her caretaker in the situation.

          But neither of them are doctors, and have no place on whether she should live or die. His best is not good enough. This is a medical issue. I wouldn't want any judge deciding on my medical care...ever. I'm not interested in the husband's opinion. Only a doctor's will suffice. Without a written statement, a doctor, and only a doctor should
          • Your appeal to the authority of the medical profession is flawed. It happens frequently that even individual doctors cannot decide on a definitive course of treatment, and that a group of doctors looking at the same patient would have differing opinions. Doctors often present patients with choices about their care and treatment.

            There are many cases where there are alternate avenues of treatment, for example, painful chemotherapy that may extend life for a few months but confine a person to a hospital bed i
            • The judge is not choosing the treatment, only allowing the husband to do so based on his wife's wishes.

              But we are depending on the word of the husband. Granted she chose him to be her caretaker when they married, and of course I have no idea how it panned out, whther she regretted it or not, was he abusive, etc. By all appearances, the blood family(mom and dad) had her best insterests at heart, but then who's to say that they simpy didn't want to lose her? We don't know the husbands true motives for wanti
  • Directed at those who were for removal of Terri's feeding tube, your question devolves down to one simply of abortion.

    But with an interesting twist, I find. Obviously it's usually the woman making the decision to abort (AFAIK, men have zero reproductive rights under the law). Some in the pro-choice crowd have couched the issue in terms of men telling women what to do with their bodies. In your hypothetical, if the judge has ruled that the husband is the legal guardian/surrogate speaker for her, then does

  • Pregnancy -> Nine months or less.

    Longest PVS w/ partial recovery -> 12 months

    So not only would no judge who'd seen all the medical evidence rule to remove it at that point, pregancy has nothing to do with it, because she can't possibly have been pregnant longer than her potential recovery period, unless some sick fuck raped the veggie.

    Or, in conclusion. You still don't know anything about the case or PVS, and it's still bloody well obvious, but I'm sure that the fact that you're completely without
    • Thank you! You answered the question exactly how I hoped you would. You completely dodged it because it makes you uncomfortable about your own beliefs.
      • You are a complete and total dumbass, you know it?

        Here's your answer: NO

        Is that clear enough for you? Now, why don't you explain how this could have any implication in any way, shape, or form on reality without involving a complete and total disregard for law, medical precedent, and human decency? All things which, you know, as I look around, I can't seem to find in any current or recent cases.

        Mike. Get a radio, tune it in to some Classical music. Maybe it will upgrade your IQ a few points and we can ta
    • I have to step in here...

      So not only would no judge who'd seen all the medical evidence rule to remove it at that point

      I need to know how any person, including a judge, could make any call on medical evidence if they don't have medical training. We don't have doctors deciding matters of law. How can we possibly tolerate the reverse? I would be/am scared to death of having anybody but a doctor deciding how I should be medically treated. This is a binary issue. Medicine/doctor...Law/judge...Rarely should
  • Of course the judge is wrong. Otherwise you're performing a very late term abortion. Asking a judge to rule in a medical case would be very similar to me going to the courthouse to get my appendix taken out. There is no judge(unless he is a licensed MD that has actually examined the patient AND consulted with others) on the planet that is qualified to make such a ruling. The public is mistaken to hand over that kind of power. So, my question to you is, If you believe in democracy and the majority votes with

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