> -----Original Message-----
> From: jack syme [mailto:drsyme@cablespeed.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 9:31 AM
>
> You are completely distorting my position.
No, you don't like the comparison that your position provides a more
easy death for a convicted mass murderer of children or animals than for
this lady. One of the interesting things is that if someone gave her a
BIG shot of sodium pentathol right now, with her feeding tube out, it
could be considered MURDER. And what is bizarre, if someone actually
walked into the room with that shot full of pentathol, the police would
try to stop it. Wouldn't it be more merciful to murder her right now so
that her body and whatever part of her mind remains doesn't have to
suffer 2 weeks of deprivation? Or do you think it is better to starve
her? The logic here is clearly incredibly crazy.
>
> I am not in anyway claiming that her rights should be denied
> because she is
> in a PVS. I am saying, in fact, just the opposite. The best
> evidence that
> we have is that she would refuse a feeding tube in the
> condition that she is
> in. My position is that we should be maintaining her right to self
> determination, her autonomy, even after she is not able to
> make her wishes
> known.
There are two things. One, her desires are in question. Secondly, she
has no chance to change her mind. And even the court decree you pointed
me to noted how unclear her position was. It probably is for all of us.
We say different things to different people at different times about
this subject. To take one of them and say that is the patients only
position seems rather bizarre.
Why are you convinced that she is not in
> a PVS when 3
> out of 5 expert witnesses agreed that she was, do you claim
> to know more
> about PVS than they do? Testing is not necessary to make a
> diagnosis of
> PVS.
That is not a really high level of certainty. It takes a unanimous
verdict of 12 people in a murder trial to impose the death penalty but
we settle for 3/5 for death for an innocent person? What kind of logic
is this? I can personalize this a bit. After my cancer surgery, they
gave me just barely better than 3/5 chance that I would be cancer free
for 5 years. Yet, now having lived a year with no recurrence, my odds
are considerably better than that. If a group of people had looked at
me a year ago to decide if I would live or die based upon my very
similar odds, they would have put me to death based upon that 3/5 ratio.
So, I am not impressed by your argument.
> She will be treated and made comfortable. She is not being
> offered less
> protection than animals. How many animals have years of
> court cases, state
> and federal supreme court decisions, and gubernatorial stays
> before they
> die? Your comments dont fit with the facts.
So years of court cases justifies killing people. Wow. What logic. How
comforting to everyone. We can kill you so long as we have lots of
people argue about it for a long time. Hip hip hooray for our legal
system!
Received on Sat Mar 19 12:27:20 2005
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Sat Mar 19 2005 - 12:27:22 EST