Terri Schiavo has been dead for 15 years. It is only her body that lives.

[w4rma]

Not her. Brain dead = dead. She's dead.

Her soul has already left this plane of existence.

What the Republican leadership, and about 30% of this nation, are pushing for is to keep that souless, brainless body alive until it dies of old age.

They are grandstanding, selfish, hypocrites.

The GOP has de-funded treatments (in addition to outright banning stem-cell research) that would help brain injured patients, such as many of the injured soldiers who were blown up in Iraq and are laying, ignored, in some military hospital. The GOP refused to properly fund health care for regular Americans, prefering that that money is given to the super-wealthy, instead.

[Cleita]

1. A modern, technological version of mummification.

As I said on another thread, various indigenous peoples from early times to the present have mummified their ancestors in the belief that they are keeping them alive in a way, trapping their souls so to speak. They often bring them food, take them on expeditions and give the mummies a place of honor at a festival or banquet. This is just another process of preserving a body, whose essence has left for another plane of existence.

[WoodrowFan]

5. interesting comparison.

interesting comparison. thanks.

[Ivan Sputnik]

2. I have to agree.

Terri died a long time ago, rest her soul.
Keeping her body alive is obscene.

[DemExpat]

3. I see her plight as Terri being an artificially kept alive body

which imprisons her soul - keeping it locked into the broken body where it cannot manifest any of its "desires" here on earth OR leave for another plane......which makes this situation even more obscene imho.

DemEx

edit: and wholeheartedly agree with your view of the GOP.

:puke:

[Cleita]

11. If it's any small comfort to you, I don't think her soul is trapped.

If you read any accounts of near death experiences or out of the body experiences, it seems the soul, or life essence as I prefer to call it, can leave the body under certain circumstances to return back into the body when the right conditions allow it to. I feel that when the brain shuts down, the soul is freed into another plane of existence, even if the body is still around and functioning at a very primitive level. It won't return to the body without the right conditions.

[DemExpat]

12. This is a different topic entirely.....mini-thread hijack....

but I don't feel this is true....the life-force/soul is still in all of Terri's cells, holding her body together as it were, as it is only when the life force leaves that a body decomposes, is dead.

IMHO.

:hi:

DemEx

[killbotfactory]

4. No cerebrum, no person.

If they found a way to decapitate someone while attaching machines to their organs to keep their body alive, would these jackals consider that person alive? this is insane.

[Cleita]

9. This opens up another whole can of ethical worms.

What if a brain transplant were possible. Like what if someone, whose body is so battered in a accident that it's only a matter of hours before it dies, but the brain is unharmed? Let's say they could transplant that brain into someone who is brain dead but with a functioning body, what would the religious folks say then?

[Ivan Sputnik]

6. I think this case is a proxy

for the abortion debate.

[killbotfactory]

8. it is

otherwise the pro-life fundy wingnuts wouldn't give two shits about this poor family.

[mondo joe]

7. Some think starvation over 2 weeks is cruel but 15 years of zombification

isn't.

It's quite amazing - keeping her artificially functioning without hope of recovery or sentience is pretty cruel in and of itself.

[tridim]

10. I wonder if she's been in pain those 15 years?

Who knows? Aren't there pain centers in the spinal cord? The possibility is reason enough to let her pass on.