Please Try and Help Terri...... 4128

opined:

No, no. The LAW leaves that as the only option, because it recoils from anything more active.

Not generalizing. I sought analogies. You know about analogies?

Without a cerebrum, those are not willed actions, but very like the frogleg in the clbuttic highschool biology lab experiment. A smile for example is not something that can take place without one of two things: a) a cerebrum, OR b) an observer with an active imagination.

Please read again what you have written, Peter, in all seriousness: She has no cerebrum, but she has a mind? I am hard put to know what to make of you. What do you think the mind is? What do you thing the cerebrum does? You, who makes such a big thing of logic in approaching problems, can you not put those two things together? Peter, nobody will take you seriously.

No. You do not understand what autonomic means. Peristalsis is autonomic, the extruding motion that moves the stomach contents through to the anus; the beating of the heart is autonomic. Those are controlled by parts of the nervous system other than the cerebrum. You confuse the term perhaps with "habitual" -- things that you do "without thinking" (which is inaccurate). Keeping your balance while standing up is not autonomic. Babies have to learn to keep their balance. They don't have to learn to force their waste products out into the diaper. It is not that she is not thinking symbolically; she literally has nothing in her head to think with, symbolically or otherwise. LITERALLY.

I dispair, Peter. You are easily the most dogmatic person I have ever encountered, in 77 years in which I thought that I had seen nearly everything.

You are a renaisance man, in the sense that this experiment, when first done, caused people to think that the electrical potential actually induced life into the muscle. It didn't, of course. It was simply a reaction to chemical vents that the potential initiated. If you believe that this is life, Peter, then you will believe anything.

Read it again, Peter. See the word "probate"? This word means "to try", in the judicial sense. A will has to get through the probate court before it can be executed. "Kill me if I have bad hair isn't likely to pbutt this process, is it?

She is getting palliative treatment to relieve pain.

As you have seen, I am not a Christian, so it is hard for me to deal with Christian arguments. And meaningless for you to present them to me. I have tried to keep my own religion out of this, and think I have not done badly. Perhaps you should do the same. If, however, you would like sometime to discuss distortions of the legacy of Jesus the Nazarene that have become entrenched in Christian dogma, I will be happy to oblige, but that isn't part of this discussion. I tried to make that clear when you brought up Augustine of Hippon; evidently I failed. Even Christian opinion, by the way, is not monolithic on this problem, exactly because it is such a complex one. That is what you are denying; you are trying to shoehorn this immense problem into a simple, universal, and easy yes-no answer. That does save the effort of thinking about it, doesn't it?

I have no right. I am not her husband (who is her legal representative, subject to the supervision of the legal system). But that, you have told me, is irrelevant, because even she, were she able, wouldn't have such a right either. That is where we disagree. You, by the way, have no right to maintain her body as a relic of what she once was.

But pronouncing on other people's morality is what you are doing. It is what you have been doing since we started this exchange, just as you pronounce on the way people approach problems. Pronouncing on how other people operate is what you are all about. Loosen up, Peter. Cut people some slack. We're only human, and we try to deal with our problems, both moral and technical, the best way we know how.

You are at odds with much current thinking. At my age, the thought of rest is not an unrealistic one, especially as I am a cancer patient. It is not difficult for me to imagine a scenario in which I would be quite desperate for an end. My living will does not mandate "pulling plugs" if I get bored with life (nobody would accept it if it did). But I do not want to be a vegetable like your client Terri, and I do not want my life to be prolonged artificially. I do not think I am immoral for wanting a more dignified exit. I do not believe that I offend my maker by this desire. It does seem very important to you do keep as many terminal people around in what you choose to call "life". Why? You don't believe in free will at all?

Happiness is in the cerebrum, Peter. Please try to understand that all these mental states that we so take for granted are processes in the cerebrum. SHE DOESN'T HAVE ONE, PETER.

Well, I don't think smoking tobacco is moral, because it is destructive. On the other hand, I am circumcised (albeit not by my own hand), and for religious reasons. So it appears that sometimes mutilation is permissible and sometimes it isn't. You see? You mustn't make these absolute statements.

I've already dismissed that one.

Happily, nobody has asked you to sign off on her. You are kicking a dead horse.

AHA!! Things are not absolute. She feels no pain, she feels no emotion. She has no mental activity whatever. She will never have any mental activity whatever. She is so many kilograms of meat on the bed, which occasionally moves, or utters a sound, none of which has any meaning because it is the result of spasms in this muscle or that. Get it through you head, Peter: She is not a person, nor will whe ever be one again. It is absurd to maintain her in a similitude of life, convincing only to the two people who are outof their minds with grief for her, and of course for the kooks who are demonstrating outside the clinic.

Peter... I would like to continue this. But it is now 0230 here, and I see that I am not more than half through your repebreastive. I can sleep late to make up for the hour, but there is a limit. And I have to prepare for a Thrusday night flight. So this is the end of our chat; I wish it were not so.

You are one of a kind, Peter. And I thank God for that.

-- 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.