Socioly Case

Have you ever gone an entire day without eating and felt as if your stomach was tied in knots? Now, can you imagine not eating for fourteen days? By the time fourteen days has passed, the human body has gone through the three stages of starvation. The fats and proteins are converted into glucose for energy. Second, the liver turns fatty acids into ketone bodies. The liver must do this because after one week the brain begins to rely on the ketones and glucose for energy.

In the last stage, which occurs once the fat reserves have depleted, proteins become the primary source of energy and the muscles quickly deplete. Once this stage has set in the starving person could return to eating a healthy diet and it would not make too much of a difference because the cilia in the stomach has lost its capacity to absorb essential nutrients. Eventually cell functions stop, organs shrink, and the body begins to eat itself until there is no way for it to sustain life. This sounds like a gruesome and painful way to die. So with a little bit of details of starvation, let us get acquainted with the case of Terri Schiavo.

Terri Schiavo collapsed in her home on February 25, 1990 at the age of 26. She suffered cardiac arrest and anoxic brain damage. The lack of oxygen to the brain caused major brain damage. The cerebral cortex had been completely destroyed and replaced by cerebrospinal fluid. Her upper brain was estimated to be about 80 percent destroyed. However her brainstem, which is responsible for breathing and heartbeat, was still functioning properly.

This allowed Schiavo to survive with the assistance of a feeding tube. Terri Schiavo was diagnosed to be in a Persistent Vegetative State (P.V.S). She then emerged from the coma and then into a persistent vegetative state. A persistent vegetative state is "a permanent and irreversible state of unconsciousness in which there is an absence of voluntary or cognitive behavior and an inability to interact purposefully with one's environment".

In 1998 her husband received permission from the circuit courts of Pinellas County, Florida to pull Schiavo's feeding tube. This would cause Schiavo to die an excruciatingly painful death of "starvation and dehydration" that would have lasted approximately "10 to 14 days". Euthanasia, physician assisted suicide, is preferable over the painful death that Schiavo has been sentenced to. This would allow Schiavo to have a quick, painless, peaceful, and most importantly humane death.

Unfortunately euthanasia is not permitted in the United States. So not legalizing euthanasia makes us all subject to becoming victims, which is what Schiavo had become from what many believe to be an unjust death sentence. Euthanasia should be legalized because it increases the civil liberties that Unites States citizens are granted, it allows a doctor to perform mercy acts without having to worry that he/she will be imprisoned for life, and it prevents people, like Terri Schiavo, from having to die by an outdated and painful method.

Michael Schiavo believed that his wife Terri would have never wanted to live life as a vegetable. Since Terri never had a living will, wishing to refuse medical treatment. Michael Schiavo is drawing his conclusion on conversations with his wife before the accident. After three years of ineffective therapy. Michael Schiavo petitioned to discontinue the life support for Terri. Her parents did not agree with Schiavo's wishes.

Bob and Mary Schindler have been battling with Michael Schiavo for over 10 years. They do not believe that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state and provide video evidence to back them. They also claim that Terri was a devoted Roman Catholic who would not violate the Church's teachings on euthanasia. They also claim that Terri never shared the idea not being kept alive to anyone in her family. .

Autonomy, or self-governance, is grounded in our cognition and is thus lost in vegetative, minimally conscious, and brain-dead patients unless the patient prepared a written or oral directive. Oral directives are subject to significant challenge, but written directives are difficult to overturn. The Schiavo case would not likely have occurred as it did if Terri Schiavo had a written living will. So I would urge for everyone to prepare