So we've now heard from every court in the land and letting a brain-damaged, not brain dead (The appropriate diagnostic tests to determine brain death or PVS for that matter were never performed per her husbands orders) but brain damaged woman starve to death is legal.
So now we have to answer the next question: what level of brain damage merits a death sentence? Hell, I wouldn't want to live with a 70% cognitive loss (and I'll leave that term unefined, so should we make that the cut-off? In the absence of incotrovertible proof, we shall assume that anybody who suffers a cognitive loss of greater than 70% shall be a candidate for court ordered euthanization.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
And yeah, I'm angry about this. Look, I'm as uncomfortable as the rest of you when it comes to federal intervention into medical treatment, and I'm a big proponent of State's Rights and a very limited federal government. But when the state government takes no action to prevent a gross miscarriage of justice, resulting in the tprturous death of a brain damaged woman who cannot speak for herself, then, damn it, somebody has to step in.
And for the next person who comes up to me and tells me that dying of dehydration/starvation is not torturous, I will duck tape you to a chair, gag you, and let you experience that euphoria for a couple of weeks and see just how "euphoric" it is.
Tell you what, the next time somebody comes to my door seeking help for the starving children in Ethiopia or Botswana or wherever the next crisis of the minute occurs, I'll just tell them that starving to death is a very "euphoric" experience, and since those kids have no real expectation for a quality of life that I would deem suitable, that they're better off dead anyway.
What kind of country are we that we get more outraged over drilling for oil on a postage stamp sized piece of land than we do over allowing a human being to starve to death?
Addendum to my living will: I do not want to be starved to death or dehydrated. Period. If you want to give me a euphoric death, give me two beautiful women, an overdose of Viagra, and about a half an hour, and I'll be as euphoric as it is possible to be.
Posted by Rich at March 24, 2005 2:32 PM | TrackBack