Sunday, March 20, 2005

One More From the E-Mailbag...

Here's this one from Dennis Donohoe. I'll reply and then I have to get back to paying work...

I too am conflicted about this case. However, I see a distinction (as did your e-mail correspondent) between cutting off "life support" and removing a feeding tube. Consider the sad case of Karen Ann Quinlan. She had life support cut off, but proceeded to live another ten years. Clearly she still had a feeding tube. I think it is grotesquely cruel to let someone slowly and painfully starve to death by cutting off their food. If the courts (and her husband) want her to die, why not give her a quick acting injection and bypass the suffering? The answer seems to be that this would offend the public's sense of propriety.

This is a sad situation. I agree with you, by the way, that this Congressional intervention is crazy.

Even if there is a difference between cutting off "life support" and removing a feeding tube, I don't see how it matters to the debate currently going on in this country. Either way, people make a decision and it leads to the patient dying.

When I first read about the Schiavo case, several elements of the story had me conflicted, and one was this notion of someone painfully starving to death. In such a situation, I would sure rather go via lethal injection. However, I then read in a couple of articles like this one [Miami Herald, subscription may be required] that what is now being done to Ms. Schiavo is peaceful and painless. The right-wing news sources all say otherwise...and I think this all dovetails with the article by Dana Milbank to which I linked last night. We have competing sets of facts here, perhaps on at least one side, tailored to fit the readership.

Don't anyone write and tell me which one is correct. I know who I want to ask about this, and I'll accept what he tells me. But we don't read the news so we can get "facts" that cancel one another out, and then have to go out and do our own research. News exists to tell us things with some authority, even the things we might not want to hear. Or at least, it used to. We don't have to believe everything we're told, and we shouldn't. But we also ought to have some sources that won't fib or sugar-coat to appease their key demographic group.

Incidentally, I think the argument for letting the patient starve as opposed to administering that lethal injection is that in the latter, it seems more like humans are taking a life, whereas in the former, it's like we're stepping back and letting God work His or Her will. But I also think that's one of those distinctions without a real difference.

• Posted at 1:45 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

This just in from John Thomas...

Terry Schiavo is not on life support. She is not suffering from a "fatal congenital disease." If her feeding tube was not removed, she would continue to live, much like if Christopher Reeve's breathing tube was not removed, he continued to live.

There's way too much conflation of the different kinds of medical status to compare Schiavo's case to a myriad of other things, but it's apples and oranges, and just serves to confuse people who might not know what's going on. The insinuations in your recent blog post are part of that confusion.

Why not declare to people that Terri Schiavo is not on "life support" any more than Christopher Reeve was, and that she is not suffering from a fatal disease like the child referenced at the blog you linked to.

You're right that the two cases are not exactly alike but I think you're wrong, at least in a conversational sense, that the term "life support" does not apply in the Schiavo situation. I just did one of them nifty Google searches and found well over 3,000 news stories and headlines that disagree with you. A lot of folks, including doctors on both sides, seem to think she was on "life support."

In any case, the rhetoric and arguments that people are using to demand that her feeding tube be reinserted could certainly apply to darn near any instance where human action or inaction leads to the termination of a life. And without taking sides on the Schiavo matter — because I'm conflicted on many aspects of it — I have to wonder what larger principle her defenders think they're fighting for. Tom DeLay is convening emergency sessons to make sure this one woman has "every opportunity to keep living" but there are plenty of people who don't get that opportunity and I don't see him spending five seconds on them. And just last week, DeLay was trying to cut $40 billion from the Medicaid program, and that would certainly hasten a lot of deaths...and in people who are alive in more than the technical sense that Terri Schiavo is still alive.

If you read the article about the child in Texas, you'll see that it's also about a 68-year-old man who, like Schiavo, is in a "persistent vegetative state." Texas law apparently allows the hospital to turn off his ventilator, which will end his life just as surely as yanking Terri Schiavo's feeding tube will end hers. That man's family is fighting to keep him alive and there isn't even anyone in the case saying, like Terri's husband says of her, "this is what (s)he wanted." Why isn't Congress convening emergency sessions to give that man "every opportunity to keep living?" If we want that to be our national goal, great. Let's apply it to everyone.

• Posted at 12:30 PM · LINK

Cartoonists Convergence

The National Cartoonists Society has done a major upgrade of its website. Of interest to all will be the member listings where each NCS member (with a few holes) has done up a little bio of him- or herself. And even more interesting are the ones done in the past by those no longer with us.

As you may note over there, the NCS is having this year's Reuben Awards Weekend in Scottsdale, Arizona from May 27 to 29. The festivities are generally open only to members but they've invited me to be there in order to roast my friend Sergio Aragonés and to emcee a rousing game of Quick Draw!, the cartoon improv game we play at conventions. This should be a lot of fun, except that the dinner requires formal wear. I own two tuxedos, one of which is too big for me now and one of which is too small. I've been losing about four pounds a month since I got a new doctor. (Good news because I was afraid my family was going to petition Congress to remove my feeding tube.) If this keeps up, by the end of May, I might be to the point where my tailor can take in the jacket of the too-large tux and let out the pants of the too-small tux, thereby creating one tuxedo that will fit me. We would then take the coat and trousers that remain and use them to dress Jabba the Hut.

• Posted at 10:53 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

I'm still in Cream of Mushroom mode, but if you're interested in the Terri Schiavo case, read this blogpost about how people in Texas are having their life supports disconnected under a law signed by George W. Bush.

• Posted at 10:07 AM · LINK