31st March 2005

Compassion

posted in Irascible Nonsense |

The Dutch are exploring ethical approaches to euthanasia.  I will take the doctors’ word that the person who was Ms. Schiavo was gone never to return and no person remained in the body they cared for in hospice all those years.  But when the decision was made to end the artificial life support, there must have been a more humane way to ease that organism’s passage.

Cursed Republican christian militia.  I’m getting my tinfoil hat out and I’m gonna hunker in the bunker.   

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2024 at 5:51 and is filed under Irascible Nonsense. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 7 responses to “Compassion”

We invite you to comment!

  1. 1 On March 31st, 2024, Peter (the other) said:

    And miss spring coming to your gardens? Oh yeah, you’re off to warmer places anyway. I’m with you on the aluminum foil hat though (as they build cell-phone repeaters all about me).

    So strange, in 2024, I remember public high school in the mid sixties. Girls were not allowed to wear pants of any kind, skirts had to be to the knees, male hair had to be no longer then a certain length. Slowly,change comes, but not evenly. Sometimes two steps backwards before three steps forward. I realize now, I will go to my grave in a world still governed by silly, ancient superstitions and predjudice.

  2. 2 On April 1st, 2024, fp said:

    Other Peter,
    I’m hoping that the daffodils will be blooming by the time I get back home.

  3. 3 On April 1st, 2024, gillian said:

    I agree with you: they should’ve found a better way to end (what was left of) her life than having her starve to death. An injection, perhaps? I felt as well that it was inhumane to just unplug her.

    I hope her family can move on from this and live their lives. They probably won’t, though.

  4. 4 On April 1st, 2024, Peter (the other) said:

    Ah daffodils, such joyous trumpets of life’s renewal. Highly needed after two weeks, and counting, of death watches. I have fond memories of spring in Regent’s Park, London. Fields of daffs waving in the breeze like a bunch of excited schoolgirls let out for recess. Here in blueland, the heat today, already making all the aromatics give forth, summer like.

  5. 5 On April 4th, 2024, fp said:

    I’d hoped for the daffs, but I’m settling for crocuses and snow drops. The daffs and the tulips are on their way though, 70 degrees here today when we got home.

  6. 6 On April 6th, 2024, mememomi said:

    Far to lazy to look it up now, but I have seent on the teevee some doctors say that the starvation, for a person in her condition, isn’t actually painful. In fact, to my ears’ surprise, one of them docs said that people in that condition report that they don’t feel hungry at all (even tho they’re aware that they ought to). Then they eventually pass into a coma and then lights out.

  7. 7 On April 6th, 2024, Janaki said:

    The neurological concensus (retired cardiologists turned senators notwithstanding) is that the body no longer had a cortex. The cortex and neocortex had liquefied in the 15 years since her heart attack (factoid: her heart attack was probably from bulimia). If I remember my neurophysiology correctly, that means that it could not think or put meaning onto stimuli. In other words, it did not know it was in pain, and it did not care. What I find most intriguing about all of this, is that the body in question’s parents (damn their right wing christianist hides) may have actually helped further some kind of resolution about abortion. Perhaps we should be asking something like: at what point do we become human, and do we lose our humanity? Is sensing pain like a reptile enough? Or do we need to know we are in pain and be able to care–by trying to stop it? At what point does the fetus have enough cortex and neo cortex to have moved beyond reflexive avoidance of pain and on to knowing and caring? Interesting. Also, interesting that every “pain-reliever” that I know of relieves pain in the Central Nervous System, i.e. we still know we hurt, we just don’t care. That’s how powerful the neocortex is.

    Ok, it was too long.

Leave a Reply

  • Google Search

  • Archives