The fifteen year battle over the life of Terri Schiavo dominated popular culture in the early 1990’s until her death in 2005. The heated court cases that were to decide this woman’s fate caused a deep fissure to form between her husband Michael Schiavo and her family, the Schindler’s. This decade and a half crusade was propagated by intuitive Christian mind set of the Schindler’s and their supporters as they presented no evidence to support their claim that Terri was living in a broken body besides anecdotal information. They fell victim to confirmation bias as they grasped for any glimmer of hope that their daughter was still alive, buried beneath her own shell of a body, screaming to get out. In the following pages, the anecdotal information will be presented and explained while showing how the methods of critical analysis should have been applied to ascertain the same conclusion reached by the judges but in a more expedient process. To begin, a general overview of the case will be given followed by the presentation of anecdotal evidence such as the video records that “proved” Terri was not in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), the construct of the Schindler’s argument founded in fundamental Christian beliefs, and other pattern seeking/pattern finding behavior that was used to vilify Mr. Schiavo as well as justify much of the observational evidence used to determine causal relationships.
The case of Terri Schiavo began in the early morning hours February 25, 1990 in the home of Terri and Michael Schiavo. When Michael came home from work and found his wife unconscious. Ms. Schiavo has gone into a form of cardiac arrest brought on by hypokalemia, an imbalance in blood potassium levels. In this case low potassium levels had fo...
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Quill, Timothy E. "Terri Schiavo — A Tragedy Compounded." New England Journal of Medicine 352.16 (2005): 1630-633. Nejm.org. New England Journal of Medicine, 21 Apr. 2005. Web. 08 Dec. 2011. .
Terri Schiavo Reacts to Phillies Second Consecutive NLCS Victory - YouTube. Perf. Terri Schiavo. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. 29 Oct. 2009. Web. 12 Dec. 2011. .
The Terri Schiavo Story - Part 1 - 5 - YouTube. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Franklin Springs. Web. 11 Dec. 2011. .
Thogmartin, Jon R. Report of Autopsy. Rep. no. 5050439. Largo, Florida: Medical Examiner's Office of District 6 Pasco and Pinellas Counties, 2005. Print.
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Another case is that of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson whose death was initially ruled the result of accidental suffocation. A second autopsy produced a different conclusion, but when the second autopsy was performed, his body had been stuffed with newspaper, and his organs were missing ("Organ Trafficking, Melanin Theory & the Fountain of Youth -," n.d.). The brain, heart, lungs and liver were missing. He also discovered Johnson's death was due to blunt force trauma to the right side of his neck (Archer,
Kemp, Joe. “Fetus of pregnant, brain-dead Texas woman ‘distinctly abnormal’: lawyers.” NYDailyNews. New York Daily News. 23 Jan. 2014. Web. 08 Feb. 2014.
...ical necessities and furthermore cannot trust any doctor anymore because people in Hopkins took her tissues and cells and exploited them.
In the Chicago Tribune it stated that some supporters of the Schindlers has doubts of Mr. Schiavo ethics and his fitness for guardianship of Terri. They bought forward affidavits from his former girlfriends saying that they swore he confided in them stating he had no idea what his wife’s end-of-life wishes were. Also former care-givers of Terri stated that Mr. Schiavo was abusive to the home nursing staff and expressed the wish that Terri was dead. I feel this evidence is enough to put the feeding tube back in. To have so many people contest want Mr. Schiavo was saying and to just have the courts ignore it over and over again, I feel is unconstitutional.
In 1983, Nancy Beth Cruzan lapsed into an irreversible coma from an auto accident in Jasper County, Missouri. Cruzan was discovered lying face down in a ditch without detectable respiratory or cardiac function. Paramedics were able to restore her breathing and heartbeat at the accident site, and she was transported to a hospital in an unconscious state. An attending neurosurgeon diagnosed her as having sustained cerebral injuries combined with significant lack of oxygen. The estimated length of the period without oxygen was twelve to fourteen minutes. (Permanent brain damage generally results after six minutes without oxygen.) After the accident Nancy was not breathing on her own and was connected to a machine, five days later she was breathing on her own and the respirator was disconnected. She remained in a coma for approximately three weeks and then progressed to an unconscious state in which she was able to orally ingest some nutrition. She was moved out of ICU into a private room where the family tried on a daily basis to get a response. In order to ease feeding and further the recovery, surgeons implanted a gastrostomy feeding and hydration tube in Cruzan with the consent of her then husband. Nancy's parents Joe (Lester) and Joyce stayed at the hospital around the clock sleeping on couches and chairs. Her sister Chris visited as much as she could while her two daughters Miranda and Angie were in school. Nancy and Chris were be...
“I argue that it is personhood, and not genetic humanity, which is the fundamental basis for membership in the moral community” (Warren 166). Warren’s primary argument for abortion’s permissibility is structured around her stance that fetuses are not persons. This argument relies heavily upon her six criteria for personhood: A being’s sentience, emotionality, reason, capacity for communication, self-awareness, and having moral agencies (Warren 171-172). While this list seems sound in considering an average, healthy adult’s personhood, it neither accounts for nor addresses the personhood of infants, mentally ill individuals, or the developmentally challenged. Sentience is one’s ability to consciously feel and perceive things around them. While it is true that all animals and humans born can feel and perceive things within their environment, consider a coma patient, an individual suspended in unconsciousness and unable to move their own body for indeterminate amounts of time. While controversial, this person, whom could be in the middle of an average life, does not suddenly become less of a person
In her essay, “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Jarvis Thompson outlines the most common arguments that people defend, and explains her views regarding each of these. She shares numerous examples and situations that she believes will support her views. One of her most prominent arguments is that of whether or not a fetus has moral standing as a “person.” She highlights the so called “battle” between an innocent life, the fetus, and the bodily rights of the mother. Within this argument, Judith outlines for us several situations which can provide people with a different outlook regarding abortion. Throughout Judith’s essay, she does not truly give a clear stance, but rather allows her readers to choose for themselves.
Then everyone hopes of Laci coming home safe went down the drain on April 13, 2003. there was a couple that was walking their dog along San Francisco Bay shore in Richmond's Point Isabel Regional Shoreline park, th...
Justice is something that we all as human being want to see fulfill, especially when we are the one that need it for us or our love ones. The family members of those who were killed by Susan Atkins and her companion will agree with it. The damage cause to their dears and the endless pain and suffering in effect from their death will support the decision take by the parole board in September 2, 2009 in the denial of a compassionate release due to Atkins’ health.
The medico-legal autopsy report should be as detailed as possible so as not to miss even the slightest of findings, which may later play a big role in determining the case, hence standardized autopsy procedures as well as autopsy protocols have been devised.
This week’s Critical Thinking analysis, I’m going to draw a conclusion and evaluation of the work that I have done for “Hastening Death.” In the first Critical Thinking analysis, I talked about whether or not the United States should legalize hastening death throughout the country. I also gave information on the different types of methods to hasten your death and the controversial issue of it. I would have to say that some of my strengths in the first analysis is depicting a strong point of both sides in the controversy. I provided a lot of pros and cons to the issue and backing it up with information to support both sides. For instance, giving examples of Oregon and Washington’s view on the topic since it has already been legalize and seeing
The denial of food and fluids to Terri Schindler-Schiavo, the 36 year old Florida woman in a vegetative state since a heart attack, has caused Americans to ponder the fact that any one of them could be in this woman's place for a variety of reasons, like an auto accident, fall, mishap, etc. And most Americans don't want to be treated by their family as Terri is being treated by her husband - being denied food and fluids in order to hasten death.
"Abortion: Woman's Choice or Modern Holocaust? – Part 2." Abortion: Woman's Choice or Modern Holocaust? – Part 2. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. .
Tracy’s father was faced with an unfortunate decision, and in his decision, I cannot condemn him for his actions. Now saying this I don’t believe what he did was particularly the right decision or particularly the wrong decision. As for his life sentence, it’s quite outrageous. My reasoning for this is because of his actual intentions and his mental rationale in doing so. He claims that he did it out of love and mercy, which I whole-heartedly agree with. With Tracy’s condition already being a significant trouble to live with and the fact that her surgeries brought her much pain and suffering is something that would be hard to bear. They claimed that she had the mental capacity of a four month old baby, so in that sense, it’s almost like watching an innocent baby constantly in pain. One part of the case says that Tracy’s mother believed that the many surgeries especially the one that removed her upper thigh bone were not surgeries but mutilations. I can see why her mother would think this. I can only imagine what it would be like to watch your loved one constantly be mutilated and going under the knife. Surgery and visits to the doctor alone can be stressful enough in itself, let alone ones that can be perceived as mutilations. Additionally the case states that Tracy had 5-6 seizures a day, which would imaginably be hard to watch and care for. Ultimately, I cannot in any way condemn Tracy’s
In A Defense of Abortion (Cahn and Markie), Judith Thomson presents an argument that abortion can be morally permissible even if the fetus is considered to be a person. Her primary reason for presenting an argument of this nature is that the abortion argument at the time had effectively come to a standstill. The typical anti-abortion argument was based on the idea that a fetus is a person and since killing a person is wrong, abortion is wrong. The pro-abortion adopts the opposite view: namely, that a fetus is not a person and is thus not entitled to the rights of people and so killing it couldn’t possibly be wrong.