Re: Please Try and Help Terri......
From: Peter T. Breuer (ptb_at_lab.it.uc3m.es)
Date: 03/30/05
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Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 03:06:31 +0200
In alt.os.linux Unruh <unruh-spam@physics.ubc.ca> wrote:
> [MH]
> >But as you are starting to think about it, you are on the right
> >track.
>
> The issue is not whether or not someone with minimal brain function should
> be killed. The issue is control over ones own body.
"Control" does not extend to starving yourself to death. Try it -
you'll be stuck in a hospital, sedated and tubed up. The diagnosis
would be that you are crazy, and that you don't know what you are
doing, and you need t be prtected from yourself.
So, no, I don't beliee that can be the ONLY issue, though it is a
factor.
Besides, it's not "her" body according to this theory - she died and
something else lived on. It's that something else that has a right to
life.
> Can someone decide that
> medical intervention should not be carried out once one's condition
> deteriorates to some level. In this case, the courts all believed that her
> intentions, as expressed by the person in charge of her well being once she
> became incapacitated, namely her husband, were clear, that medical
Firstly, they must be crazy - nobody, not even the person themselves,
knows what they would want until it comes to it in that situation. I
don't believe for one moment that the court's decision is reasonable,
and certainly not beyond a reasonable doubt.
And in this situation the cognitive her has already died. So we are
discussing what to do with her body after her effective death. Well, if
nothing else were inhabiting her body at this time, it would be
relatively easy to do whatever she said to do, but there self-evidently
is something else there! So we can't carry out her wishes as though
nothing else were to be taken into account.
I'd say that the something that is there is sufficiently alive to merit
not being killed!
> intervention was not to be carried out once she had degenerated to a
> certain state.
By all accounts, the remark in question was both brief and without deep
thought.
> It was of course complicated by the fact that she had not placed her
> desires in writing, and the courts, as always in such circumstantial cases,
> had to decide on the veracity of the witnesses etc. They decided.
And congress said they should think about it again, which they didn't.
Instead they simply said "oh, we've been through that - we decided".
> Thus, are people who argue for continuation also taking the position that
> noone can ever decide that medical intervention is inappropriate? Must
Well, one can argue that wishes should be taken into account, but here
these wishes are self-evidently as tenuous as could be. And her parents
say otherwise, as does her brother, no? Anyway, what has her wishes
have to do with it? She can't force people to kill her! No - I don't
believe one has an unalienable right to have the rest of oneself killed
off after a quick lobotomy.
> doctors always, in any case, use their utmost powers to try to keep people
> alive no matter what the circumstances and no matter what the wishes of
> the person?
Always, unless a greater good would be served. Hippocratic oath.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according
to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor
will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to
a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my
life and my art.
I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will
withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.
Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick,
remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in
particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be
they free or slaves.
Etc. I see that abortion is out too. Hmmph - well, the modern version
is a bit wimpier.
But I don't see that the origial can be misunderstood. Doctors don't
kill. Doctors don't allow people to harm themselves. Doctors don't help
them do it. Etc.
> This is clearly one of those difficult cases, cases which fall on the
> borderland, and which make for bad laws. If one believes that a person does
> have the right to decide on how much medical intervention they are willing
> to receive, then one will ALWAYS get borderline cases, where the courts
The only ethical option for a doctor is to do good. That does not
encompass killing a person becuase their whim said so - no, volition
does not overcome ethics. The ethics has to be decided independently of
what the person's wish is, though the fact of the persons wish
contributes to the ethical balance. I.e. you can't say "she told me to
do it" as though that avoided guilt, just as you can''t say "they
ordered me to do it".
> must try to figure out what the person's intentions are or were. If one
It doesn't matter. Killing is wrong.
> believes that the medical community MUST ALWAYS intervene and use all of
> the resources possible in each and every cases to preserve life, then of
> course such borderline issues become non-exisant. But other problems
I see no borderline issue! What's borderline about it? You have a
perfectly happy lobotomised person, in no pain, much loved, and looked
after by doting parents and sibling. In contrast you have a person who
was once married to her, won't divorce her, and lives in sin instead
with another woman, with whom he has children, who wants her killed off.
It's a moral no-contest.
> arise with equally severe philosophical and moral dimensions.
>
Peter
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