Re:Thank you Thomas Swift (Score 1)

as a physician who has battled with this question I have not reached any conclusions but i have many questions. I am not advocating a particular position, i am only relating my experiences. I personally could not kill another human being, i have a hard time killing bugs, and will avoid eating meat, fish/ chicken included. during my residency, we took care of children who had been born with severe mental retardation and severe physical problems. they were unable to do anything, but stay alive due to our interventions. in order to keep them alive, we inserted feeding tubes from the abdomen into the stomach, as they could not feed or eat on their own. As a result of not being able to move, and take care of themselves, they were confined to a crib and they were unable to talk or communicate As a result of the feeding tube, every month, they would aspirate, regurgitation of food into the airway. Pneumonia would result and we would put them on i.v. antibiotics, they would survive and be sent to the state facility for the handicapped and would return to be hospitalized in one month or less. These individuals could not talk and had no discernable intelligence, but would respond to loud and 'irritating' stimuli, usually with attempting to turn their neck or eyes. this was the level of their functioning. i began to question the usefulness of this monthly ritual,shortly after this time the Regan administration passed the 'baby doe' amendment which made physicians liable if they did not give aid, even if we felt it was unlikely to help, this effectivly stopped most debate on this topic. now that we are again discussing this, it might help if we, each of us, had to care for these 'individuals' for one week. Were this to happen, most, if not all, would be in favor of ending the suffering to which both the patient and parents are subjected. while this might appear to be a 'tricky' topic, it is not. Americans,us/we kill, murder, thousands of 'non americans' every day, through our weapon sales to 'non 1st world countries'; not sharing the grain which rots in our silos with other countries. to me it seems that our desire to delude ourselves runs as strongly today as it did in Galileo's time.