Terry Schiavo's so called husband

[Gimpy]

Folks.................you're ALL so dead wrong about this it stinks to the high heavens.

I live 15 milies from Pinellas Park where this fiasco is unfolding and have been listening to and reading about this case almost daily since we moved back down here in 2001. Also been kept pretty much regularly updated on the legal, moral and religious aspects of this case through my continued association with former colleaques at the Tampa Tribune(which is a "Conservative" newspaper BTW).

What you see, read and hear from these so-called "advocates" for Terri are nothing more than extravagant lies about the Terri Schiavo case that are flourishing in right-wing circles. This is no more than pernicious nonsense, all of it prompted by vindictive in-laws.

I become more convinced every day that faith and religion are two different things, and that the doctrines of tolerance that are built into all Western democracies protect one and not the other.

I find myself growing impatient and dismayed with some folks whom I suspect of exploiting religious practices and theories to advance their own political agendas. This country is on a course similar to that of another country during the mid to late 1930's when Germanys' government legislative and executive branches were "rewriting" the laws of the land to suit their own right-wing methods of "problem solving" and "public ethics".

It disgusts me to no end that there are virtually thousands of other "patients" like Terry Schiavo who have died similar deaths in the past and didn't come under this same "umbrella" of radical right-wing fanaticisms' so-called "protection"? Where were all these folks when those peoples' "tubes" were removed?

The politicization of her situation has sickened me. The fact that she's been left to linger in a vegetative state with no hope of recovery, against her stated wishes, is a tragedy.

Court-appointed, government-appointed, and private physicians have confirmed that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Schiavo suffered massive brain damage as a result of a cardiac arrest 15 years ago, and ongoing neurological degeneration interim. Patients in a PVS have no higher cognitive function and no chance of recovery.

Terri is neither comatose, nor brain dead. She is in a vegetative state because her higher brain centers have been destroyed and replaced by fluid.

The true facts of this case reminds us why it's important not to abdicate Terri to the anti-choice crowd (And make no mistake, that's what this is.... these groups want complete control over the personal decisions facing individual adults).

Terri's parents are culprits of the worst kind. They clearly love their daughter but won't let her go, despite her stated wishes. (Former professional associates of mine have said that their "motive" was established YEARS ago when her husband Michael refused to give them any of the "settlement" monies won in his medical malpractice case and they told him then they would make his "life a living hell" because of it!)

They and their attornies along with help from the rightwing political establishment in Florida have smeared Terri's husband in unspeakable ways.

The Schiavo case poses no intricate medical, ethical, or legal dilemmas. The comprehensive legal chronology shows just how straightforward this case should have been. Michael Schiavo is Terri's legal guardian, a court has found repeatedly that Terri wouldn't want a feeding tube, and Michael asked the doctors to take the tube out. That's really all there is to it.


The Terri Schiavo appeal is a vicious and well-funded propaganda campaign. Terri's parents and their allies are using pseudoscience, myths and character assassination to destroy Michael Schiavo. The right wing is eating it up.

I've made it clear to my friends and loved ones that in case of an accident or any health issue that puts me in a vegetative state I wish to have no heroic measures to stay alive. If it's a persistive state, I wish to be allowed to die. But it's evident that just telling people isn't enough. It should be in writing and everyone involved in making these decisions in your stead should be required to read it and sign it in agreement.

The Schiavo case is not only a tragedy, but also an ethical and moral obloquy on the part of those who would keep this poor creature artificially alive. Their weakness in not letting Terri go.....forcing her to remain alive in such tortured circmstances is a disgrace to all that is moral AND "Christian"!

[David]

When we were children and we saw a bird feebly moving on the sidewalk with ants eating it alive most of us went over to it and, after a short pause for consideration of the strangeness of the situation, stomped it out of its misery. We are no longer children and a human life can not be considered analogous to a birds life.

We once heard a story in the motorpool of a guy caught between two tanks that would die when the tanks were pulled apart. While I do not believe this was a true story ( I saw a similar scenario in a movie once with a wife smashed against a tree by a car, and it just smacks of a lesson being taught by senior enlisted to junior enlisted ) it does make a person think about such things. In the story the decision was made to keep the tanks together long enough for the soldier to say goodbye to his wife. Under your vision of the correct response Gimpy they should have immediately pulled the tanks apart spilling the guys guts all over the motorpool and thus killing him as he was living (quoting you above Gimpy) "with no hope of recovery".

You may think there is no correlation with the above scenario and what you perceive as the case with Mrs. Schiavo but if you take a look at the link I provided above you will see that human nature precludes any other course of action once the slope has been mounted and the slide to the bottom has begun.

More closely related to your Herculean efforts with Veterans Benefits and VA care, taking into consideration how hard it is now to get adequate VA care, could you imagine what it would be like with legalized suicide ( euthanasia )on the table? How many physically and/or mentally injured veterans returning from the present war (and past wars) do you think have said they would rather die then go on, only to lead a full and productive life years removed from the trauma? In Dutch society assisted suicide quickly moved from being applied to only terminally ill patients to those depressed as well and the same scenario would undoubtedly play itself out here.

In the civilian world it would be just as bad as HMO's are known for their ultra efficient cost cutting measures and the ultimate cost cut is to cut the patient off once their funds have dried up.

[Robert Ryan]

may god watch over this women, and grant her peace.

[Arrow]

Scout, Scamp, David my brothers your words have been a comfortto my heart this morning.

David thank you forposting this information and thank you for your reply to Steve. A better reply I could not have made.I don't know if I told you the story about my brothers do not resusitate order. His wife went against it last summer because his children were not present when she was asked to make the decision.For reasons that I refuse to detail here lest the whole precious event be mocked and ridiculed by those that would call us domestic terrorist and nazis my brother upon coming out of thatnear death experiencehad that do not resusitate order changed. He had six more months to settle what needed to be settled and then he passed quietlythe Father making the decision for all of us.

[Gimpy]

C'mon David.............your attempt to draw a "comparison" to the instances you've mentioned and the Terri Schiavo case are like saying flying a kite is the same as flying and F-16 for goodness sakes!

There IS no "comparison".

There is something wrong here. The Florida courts have ruled repeatedly -- based on her doctors' testimony and evidence of statements she previously made about her end-of-life wishes -- that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state, would not want her life to be prolonged under such circumstances, and should be allowed to die as the courts have determined she would wish. But the conservative foundations, with their massive funding, have turned the Schiavo case into a war of attrition, where delay is victory.

Don't believe me.

A simple 'Google" search tells the truth!

Have you ever wondered who is bankrolling the seemingly endless courtroom effort to keep Terri Schiavo's feeding tube attached?

During the Watergate scandal, investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were famously advised to "follow the money." In the Schiavo case, the money leads to a consortium of conservative foundations, with $2 billion in total assets, that are funding a legal and public relations war of attrition intended to prolong Terri's life indefinitely in order to further their own faith-based cultural agendas.

For the past 12 years, Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, and her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, have been locked in a bitter dispute over whether to withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration from Terri, whom the courts have determined is in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery. Late last year, in Bush v. Schiavo, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush violated the constitutional separation of powers when he attempted to overturn a PREVIOUS court order to remove Terri's feeding tube. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

An amicus curiae brief was filed in the Florida Supreme Court on behalf of 55 bioethicists and a disability rights organization opposing the governor's actions well. Two months later a public debate was held on the case at Florida State University. Among the participants supporting Gov. Bush's position were Pat Anderson, one of multiple attorneys who have represented the Schindlers, and Wesley Smith and Rita Marker, two activists whose specialty is opposing surrogate removal of life-support from comatose and persistent vegetative state patients.

The lawyers in support of and who filed this "amicus curiae" brief were doing this "pro bono"; do you wonder if the attorneys representing the Schindlers and Gov. Bush's position were working "pro bono" as well?" HELL NO!

I did some Internet research and learned that many of the attorneys, activists and organizations working to keep Schiavo on life support all these years have been funded by members of the Philanthropy Roundtable. The Philanthropy Roundtable is a collection of foundations that have funded conservative causes ranging from abolition of Social Security to anti-tax crusades and United Nations conspiracy theories.

The Roundtable members' founders include scions of America's wealthiest families, including Richard Mellon Scaife (heir to the Mellon industrial, oil and banking fortune), Harry Bradley (electronics), Joseph Coors (beer), and the Smith Richardson family (pharmaceutical products).

I found a Web site called mediatransparency.com which tracks funding for these foundations. Using just that Web site and the Schindlers' own site, terrisfight.org, I learned of a network of funding connections between some of the Philanthropy Roundtable's members and various organizations behind the Schindlers, their lawyers and supporters, and the lawyers who represented Gov. Bush in Bush v. Schiavo.

Here are a few examples:

Schindler lawyer Pat Anderson "was paid directly" by the anti-abortion Life Legal Defense Foundation, which "has already spent over $300,000 on this case," according to the foundation's Web site. Much of the support for Life Legal Defense Foundation, in turn, comes from the Alliance Defense Fund, an anti-gay rights group which collected more than $15 million in private donations in 2002 and admits to having spent money on the Schiavo case "in the six figures," according to a recent article in the Palm Beach Post.

Mediatransparency.org states that between 1994 and 2002, the Alliance Defense Fund received $142,000 from Philanthropy Roundtable members that include the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation and the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation.

Wesley Smith and Rita Marker also work for organizations that get funding from Roundtable members. Smith is a paid senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that advocates the teaching of creationist "intelligent design" theory in public schools. Between 1993 and 1997, the Discovery Institute received $175,000 from the Bradley Foundation.

Marker is executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia, which lobbies against physician-assisted suicide. In 2001, Marker's organization received $110,390 from the Randolph Foundation, an affiliate of the Smith Richardson family.

Roundtable members also played a role in financing the Bush v. Schiavo litigation.

The Family Research Council, which uses its annual $10 million budget to lobby for prayer in public schools and against gay marriage, filed an amicus curiae brief in Bush v. Schiavo supporting Gov. Bush, at the same time its former president, attorney Kenneth Connor, was representing the governor in that litigation. Between 1992 and 2000, the council received $215,000 from the Bradley Foundation.

Another amicus brief backing Bush was filed by a coalition of disability rights organizations that included the National Organization on Disability and the World Institute on Disability. The former received $810,000 between 1991 and 2002 from the Scaife Family Foundations, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, and the JM Foundation; the latter received $20,000 in 1997 from the JM Foundation.

These connections may be just the tip of the iceberg. I'm no Woodward or Bernstein. I got this information using only the most rudimentary Google skills. I imagine that a thorough search by a seasoned investigator would yield quite a bit more.

With this kind of big bucks behind them, it's no wonder the Schindlers and their allies have been able to keep the legal fight over their daughter going for so long. And it's still not over. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to intervene. The Schindlers' lawyers have succeeded once again in delaying the inevitable and prolonging the suffering of their daughter by getting "little brother" Jeb to call "big brother" George for help in rounding up the "posse" of right-wing zealots to bring it before the U.S. Congress.

They have met defeat in the local Courts, State Courts, the State Supreme Court and turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. They are wrong...............but, they believe that they have the "power" to change their version of"wrong" to their version of "right" by simply changing the "rules" to suit their own personal, political goals & agendas. Kinda like Tom Delays "associates" in the House changed the "rules" of ethics to keep him in his leadership position.

They should ALL be ashamed of themselves!

[darrels joy]

When we had to put my mother in a nursing home, I did not consider this.

When I went to a meeting about her care, they told me that she signed a do-not-resuscitate order. :ek: I got angry. She was physically fit. I asked for more information (OK, not very nicely).

I was shown the notes taken from the meeting with her (alone) at the time she signed the order. They asked her 5 times if she would sign the paper before she finally said yes and signed it. They never once asked her if she didn't want to sign it.

Oh yeah, this was definitely her decision. I could not change it even when I got guardianship of her because she was allowed to make decisions for herself.

No lifesaving measures were taken when she died. If they had been, would she have lived for a while longer? Only God knows.

We had discussed this previously when we planned her funeral. She never intended to sign a do-not-resuscitate order. Yes, I'm still angry about this.

Joy

[Arrow]

Joy...

I can understand your feelings. And by the way my brother's orders were in writing but the wording was such to give my sister in law enough legal room to have him resusitated. She absolutely made the right decision and he thanked her for it. I don't second guess the times in my life I had to make decisions for my childrens daddy and my mother. It was evident that they could not be maintained on anykind of life support.I can say without reservation it will be a cold day in hell before I starve one of my mine to death.

[melody1181]

It boggles me that people who are so against the death penalty are so for abortion and this kind of thing. Simply boggles me.

Her eyes follow objects in the room. She is still there.

When my uncle died there had t be decisions made. My mom had to make them. If she had chossen for extreme measures to be taken he would of been on a ventilator and all the stuff. Allot of people live with feeding tubes.

What the hell gives anyone the right to decide something nothing is clear. He says she wanted this...how do you believe his sorry butt?

[Packo]

Wow people, this is one hot topic and one I understand both sides of. I would hate like hell to be anyone that has to make this kind of decision. I have never been a fence sitter but for me no decision in this case is easy. I will say this though, Deb and I have talked about this kind of thing easily 50 times in the time we've been together. It is her wish and mine that neither of us would want to live in this kind of condition. It is my hope that if this would happen to either of us that everyone would respect the decisions we have made and let us move on. When two people are married they generally share their most secret and intuitive thoughts. I believe she shared these thoughts with him as Deb and I have shared our thoughts and feelings. If something like this ever does happen to me, and for some reason people try and stop Deb from letting me go on to meet my maker, please make a copy of this from the archive and let me go in peace. Then, y'all come by and celebrate my life with Deb....she'll need all of y'all.

I think this whole thing is sad no matter what side your on and truly understand both points but Congress has no right getting involved in my death.....and I speak only for me.

Pack

[darrels joy]

Paco,

Darrel feels exactly the same as you. It wouldn't be a case of undoing the measures. It would be whether to start them in the first place.

Joy