http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Q0XXPMS4GRIG0CRBAEOCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=7952464
President Bush cut short a vacation to return to Washington and be ready to sign a bill that may keep a brain-damaged woman alive, in a case pitting Christian conservatives against right-to-die activists.
...isn't the Pope against Extraordinary/Heroic Treatment?
>...isn't the Pope against Extraordinary/Heroic Treatment?
I think there are quite a lot of things that the pope and the christian right in the US don't agree about.
(This is the place where it would be really easy to insert a troll in this comment, but I won't.)
my city voted blue in the most recent election, but my neighborhood is very red (its also the only nice neighborhood in the area. everywhere else is all potholes and dilapidation). most of my neighbors are christian conservatives, and they seem to think that either the pope or kofi annan are the anti-christ. one of the two.
Then who is the US "Pope"/boss?
you mean of the U.S. christian right?
Jerry Falwell? Rush Limbaugh? Pat Robertson?
many of my neighbors, the christian conservatives, won't even talk to catholics, sling. they say they worship mary and the saints, and they also think very poorly of confession and priests.
i'm not sure they have a leader per se, but they all think very highly of that guy on the 700 club and rush limbaugh.
So who decided that flatliners must be kept alive? Rush Limbaugh? The Club?
Actually, resistance against euthanasië (just like abortion) spans through virtually all christian movements, because of their interpretation of "thou shalt not kill". It seems to be inherent to christianity.
So their answer to
>So who decided that flatliners must be kept alive?
would probably be "LOL GOD".
haha yes. probably.
in their defense, why does it matter if she lives or dies? if her husband can kill her, then he can move on while she's alive. so he should.
it seems silly.
i love the people who talk about how they'd rather die with dignity than be a vegetable for the rest of their lives. if you put a gun to their heads and told them to put on a clown suit, they probably would. very, very few human beings would choose dignity over life, if actually forced to make the decision. you'd rather wear die than wear diapers? then i hope you never had children. the human race doesn't need people with such a gossamer will to live.
>in their defense, why does it matter if she lives or dies? if her husband can kill her, then he can move on while she's alive. so he should.
true.
Yet, there's another facet to the whole thing, which I'm sortof surprised you didn't jump on.
As cruel and inhuman it may sound, the fine rapier of ethics in such cases cuts both ways, and it's exactly this what puts medical personnel under huge pressure:
Keeping one comatose patient alive more often than not means to kill another, simple as that. In every country there's an under-capacity of intensive care units, and deciding who gets that one vacant intensive care place - the young motocyclist who smashed his skull on a wall or the middle-aged woman that fell from a tree? - often means deciding the fate of the one or the other person. There's cases where someone can't survive the critical time window without intensive care and needs that bed to live - however you can't simply switch a coma-II patient who's been lingering in limbo for weeks off and a few days later switch him on again. Doesn't work that way.
This fact has successfully been banished from public discussion virtually everywhere I'm aware of, because it reeks of unethical, immoral "tell-me-the-value-of-a-human-life" rationale and makes people very afraid; but in the end, us finding it unethical or frightening doesn't stop the problem from being there. I'm not sure whether there is a valid answer to this question - "is one life worth more than the other, to the extent that it warrants de-facto execution?"; atleast I personally never found an answer, because the implications of either decision are abhorrent.
Additionally, I agree on the "dignitiy" part, but there's just cases where I personally advocate someone's right to suicide. There's diseases in which case you can pump a man so chock full of morphine he'll be on mars, but the pain will still be unbearable. That's where I personally could hardly deny someone's wish to die.
and finally:
> the human race doesn't need people with such a gossamer will to live.
ugh.
> often means to kill another
bubu, allow me to congratulate you on a brilliant insight... or at the least, an admirable scope to your reading. you're right, i've never heard anyone mention that, and it makes a lot of sense.
ostensibly though, on a long enough time scale, if you have enough non-responsive patients taking up i.c.u.s, wouldn't a capitalist medical institution invest in more? those things are terrifically expensive, so i've got to imagine they make a good profit on them, and i know there isn't any money in a dead patient.
> i agree on the "dignity" part
just so i have this straight, you agree with me that human dignity is worth less tha human life? yay!
> i personally advocate someone's right to suicide
i do too. and i just hope that the ones who do it to solve temporary problems don't have children. i stand by my previous point. i hope and pray for the day when the self-destructive tendencies of our species are gone.
>ostensibly though, on a long enough time scale, if you have enough non-responsive patients taking up i.c.u.s, wouldn't a capitalist medical institution invest in more? those things are terrifically expensive, so i've got to imagine they make a good profit on them, and i know there isn't any money in a dead patient.
No in all points.
Sadly I can only offer personal experience here, which is worthless in any proper discussion.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12617672%255E663,00.html
The measure was easily approved in the Senate, but Democrats forced a debate in the House of Representatives.
Well after midnight, the Bill was approved 203-58.
No matter what I think about the actual matter at hand, I quite disagree with that process. Passing such specially minted laws as that Lex Schiavo usually does the constitutional system (principle of legal stability?) more bad than it does the person in question good.
This whole thing is a political circus, with politicians trying to gain votes by doing things that look good to focus groups and people who have no involvement in the matter at hand, and diverting their attention from real issues. I'll have no part of it, besides a snide remark at the extremely selective way these supposed Christians apply the first commandment.
>This whole thing is a political circus, with politicians trying to gain votes by doing things that look good to focus groups and people who have no involvement in the matter at hand, and diverting their attention from real issues.
much like next to anything discussed in /politics and in public.
Maybe. But this is especially blatant and tasteless.
> no in all points
are you saying that i.c.u.'s are non-profitable?
i spent 2 nights in one when my ulcer perforated and my insurance paid out ~37k all included. how can that not be profitable?
> a political circus, with politicians trying to gain votes...
i don't understand your point of view waha. isn't the ideal representative democracy one in which the representatives do what their electors want, and thereby secure re-election?
your attitude, that representatives should act contrary to the desires of their electors, seems undemocratic. why are you so sure you or anyone else can make a better decision than the consensus of millions?
"She's dead, Jim."
Regardless of whether they think Schaivo should live or die (a decision I myself haven't made yet; compelling arguments on both sides), I agree with those who think it was absolutely ridiculous for freakin' Congress to be deciding this woman's fate, overruling the decisions of a dozen judges. How bored are they? Shouldn't they be fixing social security or something? Get back to work on real issues instead of ones that will nab you temporary headlines, you bums!
>> a political circus, with politicians trying to gain votes...
> i don't understand your point of view waha. isn't the ideal representative democracy one in which the representatives do what their electors want, and thereby secure re-election?
There is a reason the "populist" is as negatively laden as it is. Your usual populist will also claim to only have the best wishes of his supporters in mind, but this is essentially a lie: Misrepresenting the situation and misleading his supporters in order to manipulate them into voting for him. That's what this is: insincere and dishonest.
waha, i'm just not as convinced that most americans receive their news or political or ethical views from politicians. as was said earlier, i think that pat roberts and rush limbaugh have insurmountably more influence over the "hearts and minds" of red america than tom delay or dick army ever could.
how many american voters do you think could even identify what branch of the legislature tom delay is a member of?
democratic politics has little to do with politics, and that might just be a good thing. most issues that the citizenry should deal with are fundamentally philosophical issues, which should be kept far away from people with law degrees. economics and defense should probably be left out of the public domain i think, because they're too complicated and specialized for most people to understand (not because they're too stupid, but because they don't have the leisure time to develop the specialized vocabulary and frame of reference).
so uh, in summary, i disagree with your argument's premise where you suggest that people whom american citizens vote for are in a position to manipulate those citizens.
"the presumption, where you have someone that is at the mercy of others, ought to be in favour of life. and that's the president's view," said spokesman scott mcclellan.
zoomj! i basically agree with the president. and scott mcclellan. i liked ari fleischer so much more... he had a great sense of humor.
> the presumption, where you have someone that is at the mercy of others, ought to be in favour of life. and that's the president's view
I'm sorry, but I just can't hold this back: MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
Now, I was talking about insincerity earlier, but this is just over the top. No really, that's just hilariously two-faced.
Now, not that I'd usually care much for such a biased website as this particular one, but I'm going to assume this list is pretty accurate and verifiable: http://www.bushkills.com/murders.html. That's 152 cases where a person was at the mercy of the current president, who supposedly thinks that in this case you ought to be in favour of life, and he let them be killed.
For fuck's sake, just shut the fuck up. Just shut the fuck up.
Me, too. I said I wanted no part of this, and I'm making good on it and never talking about this again. It's just too fucking depressing.
(A small note before leaving: >>20 is of course correct that the issue is more complex than my examples, since the media is the one who's drumming this up, but it's a two-way street, the politicians and the media feed on each other here. Now I'm done with this.)
Also http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/
Lowest estimate: 17085 civilian casualties.
hrmph! oh well, i guess this conversation is dead.
but as my last word, i just want to say that from the perspective of logic, there's no reason to discount what someone says just because they don't practice it.
everyone i've ever met or heard of has had at least one useful insight into the truths hidden in the universe (though of course, most of them are not unique pearls of wisdom).
What would be good now is that they follow up on that >>21 presumption and abolish the death penalty once and for all.
You know, I was thinking... What was Congress doing before they were getting dangerously close to tromping over states' rights and the sovereignty of the judicial branch? Anyone remember?
They were listening to a bunch of baseball players get all emo over steroid use. Something that is already illegal and for which the MLB is clamping down on without literally making a federal case out of it.
That pisses me off. What a bunch of bums and blowhards!