h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Case in USA at the moment where a woman has been in a coma for 15 years. Husband gets court order to switch machines off. Woman's parents object and want to keep her alive.

Most people don't survive long term comas. Do we keep them all alive for that occasional case which does wake up?

Should people be able to pull the plug after 12 months, for example, without fear of prosecution?

i suppose you have to think of the ong term affects on the patient. If they were to wake up would they be the same?
being in a coma can cause brain damage and would any body be able to cope with looking after someone with these problems after knowing they have sat by their beds for years and they could have stopped that person living that disabled life?

im a cristian and murder is wrong. however God decides when it is our time to go. so by keeping people on life support machines you are prolonging their life after the time when God says it is time.

i dont think it ismurder to turn off a life support machine. i think yoou should let nature take its course.

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So, do you mean that we should not resusitate patients who have had heart attacks/cardiac arrest? Do you believe that putting premature babies into incubators etc and keeping them alive is going against Gods will since he has decided it is that persons time to go and in fact 'playing God'. There is always the criticism that we play God by aborting foetus's but the oppostie criticism that we play God by keeping them alive when they would normally die when born prematurely is never given.

Do you believe we should stop finding cures for cancer and other diseases since one can assume that God gave a person that disease or cancer from which they would die and that is Gods will so getting rid of that disease is against God will. Or have you certain boundaries on what is and is not up to God to control or when we should not 'let nature take its course.'

To answer the question I do not think it is murder especially if a living will is involved. I also agree with euthansia and find it terrible that people can stop others from legally ending their own lives when hit be severely degenerative diseases.

it has to be said that i do agree with euthanasia.

God gave us the gifts to develop medicine to help prolong peoples lives. however the difference as far as i see it with keeping people alive who are in comas is that they would almost certainly die if the machines were turned off. they arent consciene. premature babies however arent necassarily like that. they are awake and are aware of life.

it is very much a grey area and im sure there is other christians who wouldnt agree with me.

i think its one of these subjects where its a case of each to their own.

I'm not really sure but the impression I get in this case is not that life support systems are being turned off but that a feeding tube is to be removed - as I understand it, the patient is not on life support but is being fed via a tube. She has been in "a vegetative state" for the past 15 years.

The argument is whether feeding should be discontinued and whether she should be allowed to die - virtually starved to death - which could take 1 or 2 weeks.

She is alive but there is argument about whether she is responsive or not - the parents say that she is and they are willing to continue caring for her.

This is NOT euthanasia - Euthanasia would be a humanely administered drug dose not death by starvation. It's not a decision I would like to make under any circumstances.

The reason I am posting this is that if the discussion is about the Schiavo case the facts should be stated correctly.

I agree to some extent. I don't think that she should be "starved to death", but rather be given a leathal injection. As far as I can tell she's already dead, this would just finalise it.

There's a great hipocrasy here. Bush as governer of Texas signed the death warrents of hundreds of people who were ruled by the courts to be dangerous murderers. Yet when the court says that this woman should be allowed die, he intervenes.

Surely if there is a god and an afterlife he should be only too happy to let her die and go to a better place. This only proves how selective his beliefs are.

Hn you say:

"...God decides when it is our time to go. so by keeping people on life support machines you are prolonging their life after the time when God says it is time."

Then..

"God gave us the gifts to develop medicine to help prolong peoples lives."

Seems like you have contradicted yourself above.

"...however the difference as far as i see it with keeping people alive who are in comas is that they would almost certainly die if the machines were turned off. they arent consciene. premature babies however arent necassarily like that. they are awake and are aware of life."

So, the only difference you are saying between keeping someone alive or not is whether they are conscious of their own existence or not as a premature baby 'would almost certainly die if the machines were turned off.' in a lot of cases. I really cannot see the difference apart from the fact that the thougth of an ickle bitty baby being allowed to die feels worse than allowing an adult in a coma to die even if nature was taking its course.

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So, you are now saying that we should not allow God to decide whether a person dies or not it is up to us to say whether we should allow mature to take it course or not.



But that means you are curtailing a life before its 'God-given' time to go. I cannot see how you can resolve these statements of allowing nature to take its a course but at the same time saying we should have control of when and how we die.

You thinking seems to be contradicting itself alot and seems to be due to you thinking about what the Bible tells us to do and stating it but then thinking about it and stating what we as individual human beings would do as we supposedly have free-will (as long as what we want to do does not go against what it says in the Bible).

Totally bypassing the God argument (don't believe there is one so can't argue what "she" intends), if the only life support being given is food and water, doesn't that make her just like a baby who can't feed itself?

From what I've been reading of the Terri Schiavo case, she's capable of responding to people, there's a video on the Terrisfight website of her responding to the command to open her eyes (that's the only one I can bring myself to watch), and it seems her husband has a new family. There's a link in the Press Release section of the website to a letter issued requesting Terri be allowed home with her parents, giving her husband all kinds of rights and concessions. Her parents want her to live (they love their daughter and are clinging on, unwilling to let her die). Her husband wants her to be allowed to die, he says she wouldn't have wanted to live like this (not to sound sceptical but that allows him to move on with his new partner and children).

There are mentions of Christian pro-lifers involved in this - that always gets people on edge and makes them think "fundamentalist christians - must be wrong".

Really the question is, if Terri could express her opinion, would she want the right to die...or the right to live?

This is exactly why euthanasia would be so hard to legislate/police.

deb

Being switched off has some dignity. One of my relatives was kept alive by a feeding tube, it was discontinued so they could die. They had to wait around the bed, knowing that if it was an animal the act of starvation would be illegal.

I am very sorry to read that...

It happens a lot though.

This link gives a frightening story of 'being in a coma'
http://www.ragged-edge-mag.com/extra/wokeup.html

Gave me goose bumps reading that....

It's not murder in most countries, as it counts as a "discontinuation of intervention", rather than a definite act to bring about death. The administration of a lethl injection, on the other hand, *would* be murder (as legally defined).

Noggin

A lot of law in this area depends on what is known as the "acts/omissions doctrine". Basically, this doctrine holds that there is a moral difference between acts and omissions. Actively killing someone is morally worse than not donating money to charity, causing someone in the developing world to starve. Actively telling a lie is morally worse than failing to tell the truth. All of us omit to save lives or help people all the time by making other choices.

The doctrine holds that there is a difference between killing and merely not treating. Thus a lethal injection would be wrong, but not attempting to resusitate might be okay. The reason that feeding tubes are an issue is that (as I understand it) they have to be taken out every so often to be cleaned. It's argued that artificial nutrition is a treatment and that therefore withdrawing it is an omission to treat rather than an active killing, particularly if the tube would have had to be removed for cleaning. Then it's an omission to treat (to replace it), not an active killing.

Although most people have deep rooted intuitions that are similar to the acts-omissions doctrine, philosophically speaking it's rather hard to justify. If a doctor doesn't replace a feeding tube (an omission), our moral view on that action will depend on why it was done. If it was a compassionate, humanitarian act it might meet with our approval, but if the doctor did it because she was in love with the patient's husband and wanted her out of the way, that would be rather different. There's also GodBen and KazSorrel's point about why starvation is okay but a lethal injection isn't - it's the acts-omissiond doctrine at work again, but it gives the 'wrong' answer. And is switching off a life support machine an act or an omission (ceasing treatment)?

I think that the acts-omissions doctrine is a useful heuristic. It's generally true that we are more responsible for our acts than for our omissions, but it's a fallacy to infer from that that the bare fact that x is an act and y is an omission is enough to make a moral difference. What's more important IMO is a person's motivation.....