My post yesterday on what it would be like to starve to death generated some of the most disgusting, revolting, and nauseating comments ever posted on this site. I was amazed. I was flabbergasted. I was appalled. For the first time, I felt it necessary to actually delete comments from a post due to the vile language and outright hostility of so many on the left who accused me of everything from being a paid Republican consultant to a religious fanatic (I’m an atheist).
At any rate, the thrust of the argument against Terri is that she has no cognitive abilities left, that she has less brains than, as one commenter put it, “my front lawn.” And that nobody should have to live like this or nobody would want to live in this manner.
Okay…I’ll bite. Here’s some more afflicted individuals you compassion Nazis can line up against a wall.
SEVERELY RETARDED
About 3-4% of the mentally retarded are considered “severely retarded.” What does that mean?
Children are classified as severely retarded when their IQ scores fall in the range of 20 to 40. This group accounts for only 3 to 4% of the mentally retarded population. The severely retarded have poor muscle coordination and limited communication and self-care skills during early childhood.
Some but not all of these children will never be capable of feeding themselves, of being toilet trained, of having a single normal relationship with another human being, and are totally dependent on someone else to take care of them. They might not qualify as having the cognitive abilities of “a front lawn” but perhaps we could describe them in terms of having the brains of a bush or a shrub. You feed them, they grow and that’s about it. I wouldn’t want to live like that, would you? Off with their heads!
SEVERE SPINA BIFIDA
Here’s another candidate group for your execution conga line; infants with severe spina bifida.
Already, the compassion Nazis who brought us the Groningen protocols have taken to executing infants with severe spina bifida. The problem is that it’s not always clear that the infants (who are in excrutiating pain and have little chance of leading anything close to normal lives) deserve to be murdered. The fact is that the Groningen protocols were not designed to set guidelines on when to euthanize someone, they were designed to keep doctors and other health care professionals out of the slammer for carrying out the murder in the first place! Don’t believe me? Here’s a blurb from an article in the NY Times about Dr. Eduard Verhagen, the infamous Dr. Death, who designed the protocols:
He and his colleagues started familiarizing prosecutors with difficult cases, even including them on daily rounds.
.
And they developed a protocol, published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine, that is both a checklist and a how-to-guide for Dutch doctors who are considering ending a baby’s life and still want to stay out of jail.
The problem with this is that no one speaks for the infant. If the parents feel it’s too inconvenient to raise a baby with severe spina bifida, why should a Doctor stand in the way? As long as he follows the protocols, he’s in the clear, legally speaking.
Maybe you moonbats can get the ball rolling on this. I’m sure the ACLU would have some excellent ideas on how to execute these babies without the Doctor having to go to jail.
LATTER STAGE ALZHEIMER PATIENTS
There is nothing this side of hell worse than watching a loved one succumb to the ravages of Alzheimers disease. I know quite a bit about this disease having watched my mother drift slowly away until there was nothing left except the shell of a body and a destroyed mind.
It’s important to know that patients suffering from the latter stages of this excrable disease can take years to die. In the meantime, they scream.
They scream from the time they get up until the time they fall asleep. The don’t function at the level of a child; they function at the level of an animal. I can tell you that when my mother first realized she was drifting away, she pleaded with us to kill her. She had seen her own mother waste away in a nursing home with the disease and did not want to end up like her.
At what point would it have been “compassionate” to just give her a shot and end it all? Who makes that decision? And could you ever be sure that such a decision would be made in the interests of the the afflicted? How could you prevent greedy relatives from simply offing a prospective gold mine?
These are questions we didn’t want to face and wouldn’t have answered anyway. In the end, with the help of some extraordinarily compassionate and loving nurses as well as the loving care of my oldest brother who lived with her, she was able to stay at home until three days before her death.
But, hey! There are enough of these poor unfortunates wasting away in nursing homes that I have no doubt all of you “little Eichmans” out there would, in the name of deciding what kind of quality of life all the rest of us should enjoy, would have no compunction about getting these poor unfortunates onto the scaffolding and into your hangman’s noose.
In addition to the above candidates for your state sponsored murder, I’m sure there are literally dozens of diseases that afflict the minds of people to the point where, in your twisted, grotesque, inhuman cult of death, you’d” be willing to pay the schilling and have them dance with the executioner.”
12:47 pm
Monday Lunch:
Try one of these specials with your lunch: Chris Short found a predator living close by. Michelle Malkin tells how you can find if one lives close by. N.Z. Bear isn’t in the mood for anyone playing with the Ecosystem.
2:27 pm
Excellent post. This is what irks me about people debating the question of whether or not there is any chance of Terri ‘improving’, or ‘recovering’.
I guarantee no one with a mentally handicapped relative is asking that question. Terri is essentially a person who is now mentally handicapped as a result of a brain injury. There are thousands and thousands of people in this country who can’t care for themselves, and they’ll never ‘improve’, but they’re not asking to die. Excuse me, I should say they’re not asking to be starved to death.
BTW, Kate Adamson was misdiagnosed as being PVS. She actually endured abdominal surgery without being peoperly anesthetized, so she was able to feel the pain of having a scalpel slice into her skin. Later, when she was thought to be PVS, she had food and water withheld for 8 days.
She says the pain of starvation was worse than the pain of surgery.
4:42 pm
BILL SIGNED
Today’s dose of NIF - daily News, Interesting & Funny … pray for Terri!
6:11 pm
I work with these handicapped and brain injured young adults…and I have worked with Alzheimer’s people. They are no less deserving of life than anyone else. There is not a happier person in this whole world than one who has Cerebral Palsy! With proper treatments and therapies, these people can and do learn to feed themselves, toilet and bathe themselves, care for their own things. They are human beings who deserve the best shot at life. Just because our definition of LIFE isn’t the same as their’s, doesn’t mean they are any less valuable.
8:31 pm
Kate Adamson still had a brain. Terri Schiavo does not. There is a big black hole where her brain used to be.
9:41 pm
judgemc,
I’m assuming you are a physician, since you use complex medical terminology like ‘big black hole’. Can you enlighten us as to how you arrived at your diagnosis?
BTW, you should read the article more closely:
At age 33, Kate Adamson collapsed from a devastating and incapacitating stroke. She was utterly unresponsive and was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS).
IOW, she was diagnosed exactly as Terri Schiavo has been. But according to this artcle in NRO:
David Gibbs, attorney for the Schindlers, submitted 33 affidavits from doctors and other medical professionals contending that Terri’s condition should be reevaluated. About 15 of these affidavits are from board-certified neurologists.
Almost 50 neurologists all say the same thing: Terri should be reevaluated, Terri should be reexamined, and there are grave doubts as to the accuracy of Terri’s diagnosis of PVS. All of these neurologists are board-certified; a number of them are fellows of the prestigious American Academy of Neurology; several are professors of neurology at major medical schools.
7:49 pm
Most of those 50 neurologists are not really neurologists. Check out their credentials. (acupuncture will not “cure” Terri Schiavo. And I’m sorry if I dumbed down the language I use too far for you, but not everyone is as pretentious as you seem to be. Kate Ademson had a localized hemmoragic stroke. Her brain eventually “rewired” itself. Terri Schiavo’s case is not even remotely similar in any aspect. Ms. Ademson’s brain was never completly deprived of oxygen. Terri’s was deprived of oxygen for almost 15 minutes, her heart stopped, and she was shocked back to “lif.” this affected her whole brain, not a localized area. Which is why medical decisions are made on a case by case basis.
7:51 pm
By the way my information comes form the actual case. Not the edited versions you see on most web sites.
9:08 pm
judgemc,
I don’t see you backing up any of your assertions with references.
9:53 pm
Lexis-Nexis. Shindler V. Schiavo, Bush v. Schiavo. Read the actual case not the crap that is posted on the web. If you cannot access Lexis-Nexis then go to Find-law. From there you can read the actual testimony given in court plus the judges reasoning. You can also access the COMPLETE Guardian ad Litem report made to the court as well as the one given to Jeb Bush. Instead of relying on others to do the work for you, because they will always color any information with their own opinion, do it yourself.
7:02 pm
judgemc,
You said:
Kate Adamson still had a brain. Terri Schiavo does not. There is a big black hole where her brain used to be.
Kate Ademson had a localized hemmoragic stroke. Her brain eventually “rewired” itself. Terri Schiavo’s case is not even remotely similar in any aspect. Ms. Ademson’s brain was never completly deprived of oxygen
I ask you to back that up, and you tell me to read the GAL report (which I’ve read) and look at the Schiavo case testimony. Where does it mention anything about Kate Adamson?
You also said:
sorry if I dumbed down the language I use too far for you
Feel free to use big words.
7:41 pm
Sorry, I left part of my post off while typing it. I’m recovering from pnumonia and am still having a hard time consentrating while trying to breath. Of course that’s also why I have time to have such a livley debate with you. I retrieved Ademson’s information from her book and from Medline. As you can imagine her recovery spurred many, many medical papers by doctors either directly invovled in her case or researching in the neurological field. Much of the information posted was released before HIPPA. Anderson herself has said that her injuries were not the same as Mrs. Schiavo’s in several interviews on different networks. That is why doctor’s work on a case by case basis. It is very bad to generlize about injuries, especially when they involve the brain. I have a personal intrest in the Schiavo case, so believe me when I say I do not make any “assertions” lightly. I have followed this case since the very beginning. I have read all the trial transcripts, hunted down ancillory documents, researched obscure medical logs, went to school for both a medical and a legal degree because of this case. (still working on both of them. Had to take time off for baby.) I don’t read a website and take that as the gospel truth. (and I am glad that you didn’t just believe what I said but instead asked for verification.) I hunted down the actual documents and requested copies(freedom of information act) of ones not available online through a reputable database. I guess I do have an edge on the average person in that I have access through work and school to information not immediatly available to the layperson, but don’t blindly follow what I say either. Look these things up yourself. And Thank you for asking.