From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Apr 04 2005 - 20:42:58 BST
Arlo,
Thanks for a high quality analysis of the Schiavo case. Perhaps
surprisingly I find little if anything to disagree with. It's good to be
on the same page for a change. Your thoughts are much appreciated.
Platt
> Like you, I've been struggling with making sense of all this. What I've
> come to over the past few days is that the complexity is that there are
> three components to all this that get tangled up in the dialogue. But I'm
> only thinking out loud here, not making any sort of definitive
> statements...
>
> There is the question of "death with dignity". The heart of this component
> has at its core the morality of allowing even those *with* legal documents
> to be allowed to die. In cases where there is ambiguity, or an absense of
> known wishes, it extends to *who* should be allowed to decide? In this
> case, truly "pro-life" voices were combatting the concept of euthenasia or
> death with dignity "in toto". Others, giving voice next to these, were
> dealing with the "who decides when the patient hasn't". Most of these
> people, I'm gonna guess, were outraged that the parents had no voice in
> this decision. This is, it seems to me, a more abstracted or universal
> level of dialogue.
>
> Then there is the component that enters the picture when you take a step
> back and look at the Schiavo family personally. This situation was akin to
> a Greek tragedy polarized by a husband, who had at best lost hope and at
> worst wanted too much for his wife to die, and a family, who at best seemed
> unable to "let go" and at worst seemed to care more about protecting their
> feelings than considering Ms. Shiavo's. This level of dialogue gets "soap
> operish" and relates more to the people surrounding this case than the more
> abstract ideas above.
>
> Finally, there is the media/politicization component. Here there is
> dialogue between those arguing it is intrusive for the government to get
> involved in cases like this, and those who see this specific situation and
> believe the system to have collapsed. There is also the dialogue of the
> obvious use of this to advance political careers. As for the media
> component, many are outraged that such a personally painful time was
> exploited, but many more acted as "consumers" and bought everything the
> media doled out.
>
> Anyways, I think talking about it has been difficult because these
> components tend to get mixed. This is somewhat evidenced by the array of
> comments on this thread. In many ways, these situations are intensely
> personal. In other ways, they are part of the abstract dialogue about
> euthenasia and the "right to die". And in still other ways, they are about
> social/political policy. And in the end, this situation seemed to fail all
> three.
>
> As for where I am on this *right now*, I think that if the individual's
> wishes were to be allowed to die, then I think we must respect that, as the
> individual must outweigh the social. In the absense of the individual's
> wishes, then I think we should, as Bush said (I can't believe I just said
> that), "presume life". That is, even if the spouse *and* the family wanted
> to pull the plug, the individual should be kept alive. But the cost and the
> burden of this should be carried by society, and we as a society should
> agree that bearing this burden is "right". In some ways, I think we should
> mandate "living wills", to minimize ambiguous or unknown cases.
>
> As to the specifics of the Schiavo situation, I can't understand why, given
> the desire and willingness of the family to support their daughter's care,
> the husband wouldn't "sign off" on the whole thing, be allowed to get his
> divorce, and have his financial ties severed. That would have, to me, been
> the "best" outcome of this debacle. That it did not happen, is to me, very,
> very, very sad.
>
> Arlo
>
>
>
>
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