The Sad Truth

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Imagine you or one of your family members being in a persistent vegetative state, a conduction in which a medical patient is completely unresponsive to physical and psychological stimuli and shows no sign of high brain function, being kept alive only by medical intervention. That would be more than difficult to imagine, but for the Cruzan’s family it was a reality. Nancy Cruzan was in a car accident, which resulted in massive injuries. Nancy was in an unconscious state and very unresponsive in daily activities. She was in a vegetable state with an implanted feeding tube in her stomach. As years passed by the family decided they wanted the feeding tube to be removed in order for Nancy to get the peace she needed. The Supreme Court didn’t quite agree with the family’s decision of removal of the feeding tube. The Supreme Court seized the family’s upright decision to remove the feeding tube from Nancy Cruzan because her family knows what is better for her rather than someone who knows almost nothing about her.
On January 11, 1983, Nancy Cruzan was in an automobile accident. Her car flipped while driving down Elm Road in Jasper County, Missouri. Nancy was found lying in a snow ditch. She was oxygen deprived for around 12 minutes. It only half of the time she suffered from oxygen deprivation to cause permanent damage to the brain. Nancy was then taken to the hospital and said to be in Persistent Vegetative State because there was so much brain damage due to the lack of oxygen she had. Her entire body functioned only on internal controls, which maintains heartbeat, reflex activity of muscles and nerves for low-level conditional responses body temperature, as well as the digestive tract. “Although PVS is very serious, Nancy showed some...

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...anything about her other than the accident and her current conditions. Nancy was truly helpless there is nothing one could do to help her she could only lay there. The state argument about life itself mattering not the quality was shameful. But in reality if you really think about it is she living and life. She can’t speak, nor do anything a living person can, but breath. Just because she is breathing doesn’t mean she is “living”. The family should have been the ones who decide what is best for Nancy not the court especially using those arguments.
The Cruzan family had suffer a great loss when Nancy got into the car accident, and suffered a greater one by not letting her get the peace one would always hope for. At last she did pass away peacefully by getting her feeding tube removed, but it shouldn’t have taken so long for one to decide if it was right and wrong.

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