Shiavo case

She is dead?

I guess I didn't pay attention.

It's not meant as a sarcastic remark, since things can get pretty isloated in Beijing, with half of the political sites blocked from time to time.

What are they going to do with the husband now?

:?
 
Irony though-

The religious conservatives didn't want to pull the feeding tube out of Terry Shiavo while the Pope decides that he'd rather meet God on his terms from the Pope's own bed rather than from a hospital. Apparently this has something to do with death with dignity.
 
Wrong. Catholic priests all over Germany (and certainly other places too) have told their communities to consider articulating what's called a "Patientenverfügung" in German (basically a document like a last will, just that it documents what procedures you want or don't want to be performed upon you should you ever come into a situation like brain death, wake coma, temporary death, and so on -- a bit like that "No Blood Transfer" thingy fundamentalist Jehova's Wittnesses have). They weren't exactly happy with the idea of humans deciding over the life and death of other humans.

I think those "religious conservatists" didn't like the idea of humans taking the "life" of Shiavo by the decision of another human (even if he was legally permitted so). I also think they didn't fully agree with the idea of a human having to lead a prolonged "life" in a state of unconciousness that with no realistic chance of recovery if it might have been against their will to be brought back to end up in such a situation in the first place.

I think that those people don't agree with the idea of humans deciding on the death OR life of another humans.

It is logical that life should be preserved (or re-established) whenever possible, but the will of the individual should be respected. If they don't feel they could die with dignity while depending on machines to keep their BODY alive for decades after their mind has effectively shut down for good, then that should, in my opinion, be respected.

In my opinion it's part of the human rights -- personal freedom goes as far as it can without affecting the freedom of other persons. Doctors should do anything they can to save human life, but noone can be forced to be "saved" if it is their written will not to be. That's freedom of choice and has to be respected.

The tragedy of the Shiavo case is that her true opinion wasn't known and neither party could be trusted. The parents wouldn't have agreed with letting her daughter go even if it WAS her written opinion and the husband might have had financial reasons to falsely state it as her spoken will.

In that case, however, there are laws that tell people how the situation should be solved and law has given the husband right. Although apparently it wasn't legally possible to give her a painless death, it is unlikely she felt anything.

It was legal. It wasn't exactly the most humane way to solve it, but it was a perfectly legal one. I don't agree with what happend, but I only think that means the laws should be revised (in my opinion towards a solution that involves a guaranteed PAINLESS death even within the possibility of the "patient" still being capable of feeling things), not that those who made the decisions should be lynched for acting within the laws.

Even if the husband exploited the laws, the laws let him. In that case it'd be the laws that failed, therefore the laws should be revised. Even a criminal cannot be pursued for crimes he committed before the actions were defined as crime per law. That's the difference between a constitutional state and arbitrariness.
 
Ashmo, just a note on the husband. The husband was offered money, I think a million dollars, from some conservative preacher, to let this go.

One can measure moral responsibility by money. The fact that this guy is getting offered millions to forego the law suits and put his wife in the care of someone else, says that this guy was motivated by another principle.

That principle being "My wife didnt' want to be fed through a fucking tube when she was otherwise brain. Because she is my wife I will litigate to make sure she gets her wishes and you can take your millions and shove them up your ass."

A couple of million would make a lot of us blink twice on principle.

As for the truth of the case- this is why we have courts of law- not just to determine how the law should be applied but also to determine the facts of a case.

That the issue was grandstanded by the religious right as an opportunity for dogmatism, just reflects how pathetic they are.
 
As I said, I don't think he had conflicting interests when he asked for her "life" support to be discontinued, but I don't know enough to rule that probability out entirely.

Do you know of that bribe for a fact? I would believe it, but as I said, I don't want to jump to conclusions.

Anyway. What does this have to do with the general public? None of those who made their lives more entertaining by joining the protestors and shouting pointless phrases like "Give Terri water" or otherwise protesting against the decision had anything to do with the case, none of them even knew her personally or knew enough of her state and medics in general to judge whether or not she was concious.
They sided with the parents because it is easier to believe that someone who appears to show reactions is still alive and some evil cheating husband wants to cash her life in than to accept that someone could ask for "life" support to be discontinued for ethical reasons and that a body can stay in an idling state without the actual human still being alive or ever having a chance of regain conciousness.

This is a matter between the parents, the husband and the state, not the general public.
 
I heard this on Bill Mahar last night, and while Mahar's show is a cross of comedy and politics, I would give it credit. I think a decent hunt on the internet should reveal the facts.

THis crap about the cheating husband is crap. Look, this guy becaues a nurse to be with this woman. She's been down for 15 years. That's a long time to be connected to a person that is, for all intensive purposes, dead.

Honestly, this case pisses me off like the current pundits talking about the Pope to justify conservative values. I mean really, they should shut the fuck up. This exploiting a person's death for political gain is pretty freaking sad.
 
Oh, by the way:

Ding-dong the Pope is dead!

Sad thing actually. By Pope standards he was one of the most tolerant people in the ranks of the Vatican.

Let's hope the next Pope won't be another hardliner again. That's the last thing we need and would throw the church back by decades.

Although it may sound weird since Terri Shiavo was -- by all natural standards -- dead for 15 years already: May her and John Paul II rest in peace.

In both cases I'd just wish the general public wouldn't make such a fuzz of it. They're dead now and apart from those who actually knew them, nobody can say anything about them that actually matters.
 
Last I heard that the next pope is going to be an African. That would be kind of cool. I am sure the Italians would be pissed. Bad enough the last Pope was Polish!
 
It's unlikely the next Pope will be Italian. John Paul just added too many foreign cardinals for that to happen again.

Considering how conservative some Africans are, I don't know whether an African Pope would be a good thing.
 
Ashmo said:
It's unlikely the next Pope will be Italian.
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Actually, I believe there's a pretty good chance the next pope will be an Italian - solely because of demographic realities.

The next pope now is almost certainly going to be a 'transition pope': the Church had to live 26 years under Pope John Paul II - and that's a hell of a long time. They're probably going to chose a Cardinal in it's seventies for pope now; and the only cardinals in their seventies that are around right now are four or five Italians and one Southern American.

We'll see.
 
Kotario said:
Jebus said:
...chose a Cardinal in it's seventies....
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Cardinals don't have a gender?
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That post was riddled with typ0's, and yet that's the best one you can make a lame joke about?

I'm dissapointed in you, Kotario. Your lame jokes are not what they used to be.
 
Well, you're right. The chances are good they'll chose a Cardinal who won't stay around for another two and a half decades or so. I didn't know there aren't many Cardinals of that age around who aren't Italian, tho, although, after thinking about it, it does seem a bit obvious.

Well, let's at least hope they don't chose anyone who fucks things up. See the pope thread.
 
Jebus said:
I'm dissapointed in you, Kotario. Your lame jokes are not what they used to be.
Click to expand...

I believe the problem here is that my comment was not a joke, so interpreting it as such is fallacious. It was more of an observation of a slightly ironic bent.

By the way, is anyone here devoutly Roman Catholic?

Damnation, I can't remember the Ben Bova short story with the American Pope.
 
Kotario said:
Jebus said:
...chose a Cardinal in it's seventies....
Click to expand...

Welsh, do you mean Francis Arinze, the Nigerian?
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I think that's correct.

Catholic, yes. devout no. Most of the devout catholics I know are just a tad less looney than fundamentalist christians.
 
To me it's contradictory to be religious and not devout. If I truly believed in a certain metaphysical world view/eschatology, I would feel a moral duty to myself and others to go all-out with it - or, if I found it abhorrent, to reject it (and possibly, depending on the eschatology, expect damnation at the hands of an evil god). If on the other hand I don't really know what I believe, it is pointless to assign to myself a particular denomination and say "I'm with those over there sort of", or the whole discourse gets too fuzzy for my liking. (NB. Saying at this point that "religion is supposed to be fuzzy" or something is basically equal to saying it's arbitrary and inane.)

I am trying to say "organized religion sucks and makes no sense" in a polite way!
 
Well, most of my friends hold on to faint trappings of religion. If I ask them what religion they follow, they will immediately give me an answer, "Roman Catholic," "Methodist," or such. However, if I inquire further, I discover they have not attended a service in years and are part of that religion in name only. Religion in their lives exists only as a relic of what their parents taught them. So I have learned to add "devout" to my questioning, that word alone causes people to stop and think about their answer.
 
Kotario said:
By the way, is anyone here devoutly Roman Catholic?[/i]
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I am, but I find religion is rarely a good thing to bring up on a gaming forum. However, since the tone on this post and others have been civil, I'll glady try to respond to questions or topics.
 
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