The debate on life & death continues & probably will. However the concerned individual does not even have a say considering that it is he who is being decided about. In such cases the importance of the indidvidual is not taken into consideration, wot how ever is taken into consideraton is - the financial arrangement and the people around the patient.
The life support system is useful to keep some one's bodily functions active when undergoing a surgery of some kind eg. heart, lung, bone marrow, etc. However, today it is also used by the persons' family when the patient is in a PVS or permanant vegetative state. In such cases the family members keep the individual alive in the hope of a miraculous recovery.
TERRI SCHIAVO lay in a Florida hospital, fed by a drip feed. She is on the ventilator.A faint smile seems to brush her lips as her mother touches her. Doctors say her brain has been destroyed, that these responses are unconscious and that she will never be able to interact with her surroundings. How ever to a lay man such reflexive emotions are real & it would be cruel to let go of such a person.
The story begins in February 1990. Mrs Schiavo, then 26, suffered a heart attack that caused massive loss of oxygen to the brain. She emerged in a “persistent vegetative state”—the common term for someone who does not respond consciously to their surroundings. At first, the family rallied behind her and each other. Michael, her husband, trained as a respiratory nurse in order to look after his wife. Mrs Schiavo moved back into the house shared by her husband and her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler.
Then the court cases began. At first they seem to have been a cause, as much as a reflection, of family disputes. Mr Schiavo sued his wife's gynaecologist for malpractice; the court found for Mr Schiavo and awarded him $1m. This sum seems to have started the feud. Husband and father-in-law had a blazing row about what it should be used for at Terri's bedside.
Over time her family thought that she was delighted to hear their voices & is reacting with a smile on her face & certain expressions, as opposed to fact they were mere reflex actions of the body that had nothing to do with emotion. CAT scan affirmed that her brain had been irrepairibly damaged & the emotions were reflexive & were a result of sparks in the subcortex.
However the ultimate deciosion was made on 2 imp facts- her husband by law had the right to decide & that on her garnd mother funeral lunch she told her hsband that if that ever happened to me the she shuld not be put on the ventilator when Mrs Schiavo's own thoughts on the matter were fished out of the past and presented .
A Florida court twice ordered Mrs Schiavo's feeding tube to be removed and Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida, overruled it.
Her “supporters” outside the Supreme Court last week, standing in silence with the word “Life” taped over their mouths, presumed to represent her views. She, dying slowly, had no views.
Eventuallytwo weeks after the tube was removed she died an extraordinary death. Cases such a terris have largly given way & complicated matters of Bioethics
No comments:
Post a Comment