Please Try and Help Terri...... 4126

opined:

It isn't that it isn't good enough. Nobody has suggested that severely handicapped persons ought to be dispatched. It is that she has no life in any meaningful sense. It is not that she has become severely retarded, she has no mind whatever. Her responses are autonomic responses. That is not life, any more than the frog leg in the highschool biology lab is alive when it jumps in response to an electrical potential.

That's why conventional wills have to be probated before end, and why living wills as well have to conform to legal prescription. Usually the family has to be involved, and medical authority has a say in the outcome too. Nobody can make unsupervised wills andexpect them to be carried out.

But that is exactly what a "living will" is. I don't know what you think is meant by the term, but it is precisely an instruction about what to do when one's situation is hopeless and unbearable. Your paragraph above is inconsistent with your concession that a living will may be moral.

That is meaningless. You know as well as I do that it is impossible to apply the same rules to all life forms. I don't need to point out obvious exceptions.

But my uncle also had a "life force", which is, you say, your only criterion, so that the pain doesn't enter into your equation. You are now telling me that it was wrong to permit him to terminate his life, and for my father, a saintly man, to confirm his decision to the physicians. Therefore my uncle should have been forced to take it on the chin until the bitter end. In the service of what?

No, the case at hand doesn't involve pain, as far as we know. It doesn't involve any other feeling either: we're told that her brain (only the cerebellum, do you think?) is gone and the cavity is filled mostlywith fluid.

I don't know what "life force" means. I do know that different cultures regard this question differently, and few of them make absolutist statements about it (including, for example, the word "never"). It is not unlike the matter of end, which is why it is no surprise to see anti-end groups in the forefront of the already-lost battle to "save Terri".

There is an implied "never" in the above. Life, whether we like it or not, is not algorithmic. It isn't like a computer program, in which all the branch points are defined. "Never" is rarely a meaningful term in descriptions of it. That seems to be your sticking point.

Your knowledge is limited, I can inform you that it is not always immoral according to all religious doctrines, any more than that all ends are rejected by all church doctrines. I do not wish to get into a discussion of which churches are which.

In fact, "Thou shalt not kill" is a mistranslation. What the commandment says is "You will not liquidate". Hebrew, like English, has different words for the two concepts. And the concepts are not the same and not equivalent. It is hyperbolic to describe what is happening now as liquidate, although I am confident that you will do that. Most people, including most lexicographers, would agree that one cannot liquidate oneself. There are many confusions like that in biblical translations to European languages; that's because Hieronymus, who translated it to Latin, learned Hebrew in a quicky course expressly for the purpose, and turned it out in record time. It isn't surprising what the product is like. Some of the errors of language are real buffos, and some have caused bloody wars (so much for "thou shall not kill).

With all respect, not everyone subscribes to the dicta of Augustine of Hippo. If he were alive today, and dragged a dissolution's remains through the streets, I dare say that he would be locked up, and the kinfolk would sue the crap out of him.

I have to repeat my previous advice to you: This is a knotty question, exactly because it is a very emotional one. You should consider avoiding making absolutist statements about it until you are in an unsupportable position, or until you are faced with the crushing weight of the need to decide what's to be done about a loved one who is.

Probably not.

It isn't clear what a condign punishment could be. The felon has already tried to kill himself.

That is perhaps a bit off the wall.

Thank you Peter, for the discussion, which has been really interesting, albeit WAY OT. If you need me to respond again tomorrow, I'll be able to do so. After that, I'll be abroad, and unable to contend.

-- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel All those who believe that the best physicians in France, given two weeks, can't diagnose what ails a patient - please stand up.