It may not be tin-foil hat crazy but there is no connection between the two and pretending that it exists helps no one. Pulling the tube on Schiavo is not one small step away from doing away with Marta. She hasn't stated she feels this is true but even if she believes it that does not make it so. If this were true don't you imagine that the most of the people on this list would be capable of seeing that connection and acting appropriately? While I don't believe that anyone on this list has a direct connection to the Schiavo case to even begin to suggest that only Marta is capable of being directly affected by the outcome is rediculous. The only reason I have followed the case is because I have a family member in a similar, but far from identical, position and it is possible the outcome of the Schiavo case could have an impact on decisions made in this instance. Generally I don't pay too much attention to media spectacles like this.
> Now that this topic is in the public's eye, I'd like to see defenders of
> Michael Schiavo turn and attack the obscene cruelty of the Texas "Futile
> Care Act" in particular, and the inhumanity of the U.S.A.'s for-profit
> health care system in general. In the richest country in the history of
> mankind, for a hospital company to allow Marta Russell or someone like
> her to die just because she hasn't enough money to pay their
> extortionate bills, is naked murder. We should be willing to descend to
> "bad form" to uphold that position. I'm not saying that because I
> calculate the terminal-health-care issue is one opponents of the
> far-Right can use to boost our polls, but because matters like this are
> precisely the Left's reason to exist.
>
> Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net
IIRC the Texas FCA only gives a person 2 days notice to prepare for a medical review board to determine if the hospital wishes to terminate life sustaining treatment and if this board finds against keeping you alive, short of a court order stopping it, care will cease 10 days later unless you can find a place to accept the patient. I am not an expert in this field so I may have misunderstood the directive but this is how I understood it after reading a copy of the bill at the Texas State statutes documents page online. I think this is barbaric and goes some distance towards demonstrating much of the hypocrisy displayed by Bush in the Schiavo case. The cases are unrelated however. Show me someone arguing in favor of the Texas act and I'll be happy to debate the issue with them. I have yet to see anyone here take that position. I have also not seen anyone here argue the merits of a for-profit medical system. If they do I will be glad to debate that too. Supporting either position seems rather untenable to a person interested in justice. If anyone here had argued in defense of such an act as the Texas FCA it is debatable that such "bad form" would help anything but that is irrelevant in this case. The bad form displayed was against more than one person who has simply had the temerity to argue that sustaining Schiavo was directly against her wishes as expressed to her family and friends and the courts have heard all the evidence and come to that conclusion time and time again. Comparing people who hold that opinion to Nazis is, as I said earlier, beyond merely bad form. If someone were compare support for the Futile Care Act to Nazis I would still find it less than helpful to the debate but far more understandable than the comparisons as actually made. With this I should imagine I am finished with this thread. I think the Nazi comparisons require an apology to more than one person on this list but I ain't holding my breath. The sun is shining and I'm going outside to work on my Edsel!
John Thornton