From: "Gary Britt" 


"Mike N."  wrote in message
news:g40h41lge4lqm5mvfe73g4k8c5rg63g6fg{at}4ax.com...
>
>
> For those taking it to the extreme that this is a pro-life ,
> anti-euthanaaia issue, there are thousands of people in the future who
> would need to be kept on life support until the machines are no longer can
> sustain oxygen in the blood and tissue starts rotting.

Apples and oranges.  Terri Schiavo is not on life support.  Terri Schiavo
is NOT on any machines doing any breathing or blood pumping, etc etc.  She
only needed to be fed food and water.  She needed rehab, but her husband
refused all treatment since 1993.


>  The billions spent
> on those terminal cases could be applied more meaningfully to others.

I'm not in favor of such centralize planning and thinking.  Doesn't work.
Didn't work for the Soviets, doesn't work for Canada, and doesn't work for
the UK.

> There are not enough resources to give everyone unlimited medical care
with
> no restrictions, so it's best to make good use of a finite resource.

The mantra of a bureaucrats involved in centralized planning.  Its not
their ideas or system that's wrong, its a problem that can't be fixed.  So
let's give up now before anybody gets blamed for something.

>
>
>    What would you want to happen if a PET scan showed flat EEG and no
> chance of recovery?

I've answered this question several times here.  I would be much less
concern if the above were true from current testing and there were no
dissenting doctors.  Although even that wouldn't solve the problem of the
Ex-Husband being in charge of the life or death of his Ex-Wife and taking
positions contrary to the parents who properly should have been the parties
in charge when their child doesn't have a spouse.


>  I am not a lawyer but I didn't see anything that says to me that the
> Judges were doing anything but applying the law.

Well you missed the part in the Cohen article about the Florida appeals
court's analysis that was based not on the required legal standard of
"clear and convincing evidence" of Schiavo's wishes, and instead
followed the non-legal standard of "what do I think she should want
and wish for".

>    Essentially, as the
> Eric Cohen article points out, it would have been "OK" under
the law for
> the family and Michael Schiavo to collude in allowing Terri to die and
none
> of us would have ever heard of the case.

If they were all in agreement that Terri's wishes were to be starved to
death, then that would be clear and convincing evidence.  Unlike when its
only the Ex-Husband who suddenly remembers this little bit of evidence.

>  I don't see how the judges are
> the bad guys because there is a family disagreement.

That's not why they are bad guys.  They are bad guys for failing to protect
Terri Schiavo and her parents from an Ex-Husband seeking to kill Terri so
he could inherit the money.  They are bad guys for burying their heads in
the sand and failing to question the credibility of a man and the
lawfulness of his position as guardian when he effectively divorced the
woman 10 years earlier.  They are bad guys for making life and death
judgments without ever having once seen Terri themselves, without taking
their heads out of their collective assholes long enough to recognize the
fact that the entire basis for the law preferring the spouse over the
parents in these decisions was thrown out the window 10 years ago when
Hubby began a new family with a new wife by continously living with another
woman, as husband and wife, for the last 10 years and raising 2 children
from this common law type union.  In fact there is no rational basis for
Hubby's failure to formally divorce the wife, except for the one that if he
had divorced her in 1994 or 1995, then he wouldn't have qualified to
inherit the 100,000's of dollars in the bank at that time and for years
afterwards.

>  I can see your point
> that Michael Schiavo shouldn't qualify as the guardian, but the law still
> counts him as married.

The law doesn't have to still count them as married for purposes of giving
him preference over the parents in life and death decisions about the
EX-Wife.  When the entire basis for applying such a principle to a spouse
no longer exists, it doesn't take a new law for judges to do justice.  Its
what judges normally do.  Normally, judges don't let the mere
"form" of an arrangement control over the "substance"
of the arrangement.

Gary

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