Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2005-03-31 08:53 am
azurelunatic) wrote2005-03-31 08:53 am
Death
Rest in peace, Terri.
Will the rest of this country come up with some sane and coherent laws on death soon? The United States is not making sense at all right now. The general idea seems to be that a) Terri should have had a clean, quiet, and medically merciful death as soon as her next-of-kin decided that she was not coming back, or b) Terri should have been maintained indefinitely in her medical limbo to preserve what life she did have, at least as long as she had some next-of-kin (if not all) willing to be there for her. No one except some cruel idea of balance was satisfied with the removal of her feeding tube and her subsequent lingering death from dehydration and starvation. This attempt to please all has resulted in none being satisfied, and a rather loud contingent of the unsatisfied making themselves very, very unpleasant.
Since I don't honestly think it's likely that the US government is going to get sane or consistent about death in any way (the latest WTF? moment seems to involve the stoppage of expensive medical care against the parents' wishes on a child who had a viability likely greater than Terri's was) probably the best thing that will come out of this mess is that a generation of people will be far more likely to express their wishes to their next-of-kin in case the unthinkable should happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_will
Will the rest of this country come up with some sane and coherent laws on death soon? The United States is not making sense at all right now. The general idea seems to be that a) Terri should have had a clean, quiet, and medically merciful death as soon as her next-of-kin decided that she was not coming back, or b) Terri should have been maintained indefinitely in her medical limbo to preserve what life she did have, at least as long as she had some next-of-kin (if not all) willing to be there for her. No one except some cruel idea of balance was satisfied with the removal of her feeding tube and her subsequent lingering death from dehydration and starvation. This attempt to please all has resulted in none being satisfied, and a rather loud contingent of the unsatisfied making themselves very, very unpleasant.
Since I don't honestly think it's likely that the US government is going to get sane or consistent about death in any way (the latest WTF? moment seems to involve the stoppage of expensive medical care against the parents' wishes on a child who had a viability likely greater than Terri's was) probably the best thing that will come out of this mess is that a generation of people will be far more likely to express their wishes to their next-of-kin in case the unthinkable should happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_will
no subject
There also appear to be an equally large number of people like me. I don't want to be starved to death under any circumstances and I don't want the people who love me to give up hope for me as long as there are any real doctors out there who say there is some, even if there are a lot of other doctors who don't think so. If some of the first group got their way legally I seriously think they'd make it a requirement that people in persistive vegetative states be killed (cause that's what we did to Terri, we did kill her)--based on some of the things that were posted in those posts where I disabled the comments about the poor woman's existence being 'an insult to human dignity'.
(To which I say, there are lots of things going on in the world that are an insult to human dignity, and before you go on a crusade to kill all the sick and helpless, could we start with eliminating the child sex trade in Thailand or get our own government to stop torturing prisoners and/or shipping them to governments that will do it for us?)
Living wills are the way to go. If someone cares enough about not being kept alive in that state to write it down, get two unrelated persons to witness it and get it notarised, then I say we should do what they want. It makes me sad, but I do feel we must honour the wishes of those who have gone to the trouble, no matter what those wishes are or how we feel about them. Also, a living will enables those of us who don't wish to be put down to keep that from happening.
I will say that I've heard that there are a lot more cases where the families are going to court to keep the doctors and the insurance companies from cutting off treatment than there are where the families are concerned about a 'right to die'. That really scares me.
The major reasons I've got reservations about single-payer health care are the big push in this culture toward euthanasia and the fact that I don't want a government that pushes abstinence-only sex ed, allows pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions, and in Michigan wants to let doctors refuse to treat gay/lesbian/bi/trans patients to be my health care provider.
no subject
Perhaps they should pay for it, and allow the end-user to choose which independent medical service to patronize?