Re: Terri Schiavo
It's quite simple, but not easy.<br /><br />Humanity says we do all we reasonably can to sustain life.<br /><br />Medicine offers the opportunities to sustain life beyond what the rest of us can reasonably do.<br /><br />All we have to do is to work out where to draw the line between our reasonable and medicine's possible standards.<br /><br />Usually it's not a problem. Doctors, nurses and families make these decisions all the time without consulting judges or lawyers. Did it myself a few weeks ago with my father, in consultation with my stepmother and the aged care home. Let nature take its course when it's time to avoid the heroic measures on a frail body that's been ravaged by Alzheimer's and other problems for the past dozen years. <br /><br />Financial circumstances sometimes make the decisions for people who can't afford treatment, as do geographic factors for those who are too far away from help.<br /><br />Doctors and nurses do it a lot in hosptials, but quietly. They do it full-on in serious military triage where those who have little prospect of survival, or who have the misfortune to be so classified, are left to die. The same way they'd do it if there was a nuclear strike or other calamitous event in any city anywhere in the world. <br /><br />What worries me more is that a lot of people get excited about one rare out of the ordinary case like Terri Schiavo when there's tens of thousands of deaths every month we could avoid by being a bit more generous and a bit less jingoistic. Starting with some foul aged care homes in supposedly developed and caring Western countries and then moving down to butchers' yards like the Sudan at present.<br /><br />The poor quality of life of millions who could easily have a better one seems deserving of a lot more government, moral, philosophical and religious attention than the issue of the survival of any individual in a rare situation who has had the best of care and whose fate has been determined by an impartial judge who has given due weight to all arguments for and against the proposed action.
