For those who may not have seen

[unixronin]

...and who are tempted to be swayed by the claims that she reacts to stimuli and could wake up some day, go look at this thread and the scan of Terri Schiavo's brain compared to a normal, undamaged brain.

If, like me, you're not a neurologist, pay particular attention to this comment thread, posted by a professional neurologist.

I'm sorry, folks, deal with it:  Terri Schiavo is dead.  She's been dead for fifteen years.  Her body just hasn't keeled over yet.  She can never recover.  She cannot possibly have any significant cognitive ability, and the "responses" she reportedly displays are purely autonomous reflexes.  It's not even meaningful to talk about starvation being a cruel death.  That brain isn't capable of supporting enough higher function to be aware of it.

Let the poor woman's body die.  She's GONE.  Continuing to keep her body alive with a third to half her brain mass gone, and the rest atrophied, is morbid and macabre.  This is not a woman.  This is a hundred and twenty pounds of bone and meat that once was a woman.

Comments

[yndy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for those links.
Rather compelling evidence, the CT scan.

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

I suggest the following:

She's not pinin'! She's passed on! This woman is no more! She has ceased to be! She's expired and gone to meet 'er maker! She's a stiff! Bereft of life, she rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed her to the perch she'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Er metabolic processes are now 'istory! She's off the twig! She's kicked the bucket, she's shuffled off 'er mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-WOMAN!!!

She's Pining for the Fjords

[dr-nebula.livejournal.com]

Dammit! I wanted to do that rant.

:-)

Re: She's Pining for the Fjords

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

Eh, you get it next time. :)

[bbullock.livejournal.com]

High opinion around my wife's law office is that her parents have intense guilt feelings (over not knowing about her eating disorder, not being there for her, etc.) and are doing this to assuage their guilt.
"As long as she's alive, we don't have to feel guilty!"

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh yes ... I've been convinced for some time it's a severe river problem of the first kind.

(There are, to my knowledge, two types of river problem .... de Nial, and da Noob.)

[fair-witness.livejournal.com]

Yup. If you believe in the immortality of the soul, and that it can only go on to the afterlife after the body is completely nonfunctional, then all her parents are doing is keeping her out of heaven. Her body may still be breathing and moving, after a fashion, but there's not enough gray matter upstairs for her to be really here any more.

Regarding the questions of how HIPAA would govern the scans being used in a court case, speaking as someone who's worked in health information services for most of her adult life, my tentative judgment is that HIPAA isn't an issue here. As her legal guardian/next of kin, Terri Schiavo's husband has the right to release her medical records to their attorneys for use in the their court case. If they are not being seen by the judges who have presided over this matter, it's probably for some other reason. Conversely, they are being seen by the judges, and defense is arguing that the CT findings mean nothing in the face of their clinical evidence ... never mind that their clinical evidence, in my layman's opinion, is the finest example of cooked data I've seen since the last time I dealt with someone trying to cheat regarding a worker's comp claim.

If this situation (luck forbid) were happening to me with Phaed being the one in the hospital bed, I know I'd consider arranging for the leak of his CT scans myself, because the parents are arguing this in the court of public opinion more than in the court of law. You know the proverb about how if you don't have the law, argue the facts; if you don't have the facts, argue the law? I think her parents are taking so much of this public because deep down, they know they don't have the facts or the law. All they have is emotion.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

You've touched on something that bothers me about some of the fundies who are championing this case. For people who supposedly believe in heaven, they're terribly afraid fo death. Or else they are mean-spirited enough to want to deny heaven to this poor woman for as long as possible. Which could be a very interesting challenge to their position, because no matter which way you slice it, they're not operating by their claimed beliefs.