Terri Schiavo To, Again, Be Murdered At Upcoming U. Of Pennsylvania Symposium
By John Lofton, Editor
TERRI SCHIAVO and her MomIt looks like the murder of Terri Schiavo will continue at the University of Pennsylvania on April 30 when the University’s Center for Bioethics will hold a symposium titled “The Legacy of the Terri Schiavo Case: Why Is It So Hard To Die In America?”
Terri, of course, did not simply “die.” She was murdered. Thus, if this Symposium was honest, it’s title would be “The Legacy of the Terri Schiavo Case: Why Is It So Easy To Be Murdered In America?”
In any event, I say it looks Terri’s murder will continue because the panel at this Symposium is clearly stacked against Terri Schiavo. No member of Terri Schiavo’s family — the Schindler family — was invited to this symposium.
Among the speakers at this get-together are: “Lead Speaker” Michael Schiavo, Terri’s lying ex-husband who tirelessly agitated for her murder; another “Lead Speaker” is Circuit Judge George W. Greer, the evil, lawless judge who repeatedly ruled that it was OK to murder Terri; and Moderator Dr. Arthur L. Caplan, head of the Center for Bioethics, who also repeatedly urged the murder of Terri.
When I asked Rebecca Harmon, Chief Communications Officer, Department of Communications of Penn Medicine, why no member of the Schiavo family was invited to this Symposium, why no member of the panel was invited who opposed the murder of Terri?, she emailed me as follows:
“I’m sorry for the delay in responding. The following identifies our position: The symposium was established to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. It was not designed to be a debate; rather, it was designed as a forum for the expression of voices that have not yet been heard loudly in the Terri Schiavo case.
“To that end, Michael Schiavo was invited to give his perspective; the Schindler’s were not invited because their perspective has been made public on many prior occasions via multiple media outlets. In keeping with that theme, we will also be hearing for the first time, as far as we know, from Judge George Greer, who heard the case, and from Mary Labyak, director of The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, where Terri Schiavo spent her last year. The purpose of the symposium is to move us forward, not rehash the past.”
When I asked for an interview with Dr. Caplan to ask how the Symposium panel was selected, Harmon told me:
LIAR MICHAEL Schiavo will undoubtedly repeat his lies at upcoming Symposium“Dr. Caplan is declining your invitation. It’s our belief that there is very little point in engaging in a debate about why our symposium is not structured as a debate. Again, the purpose of the symposium is to take us to the next level of discussion about the socially-relevant issues related to end-of-life care in America today. To that end, the symposium is designed specifically as a forum to permit the expression of voices that have heretofore been relatively silent on these critically-important issues. Dr. Caplan’s opinions on the Terri Schiavo case have been well-reported in all major media outlets.”
Well, Dr. Caplan’s opinions are indeed well-known. On MSNBC (3/21/05), when asked if there was “an ethical obligation to give [Terri] a chance to live?,” he replied: “None whatsoever.” Why not? Because she was in “a permanent vegetative state” and therefore there was “no chance of recovery there.” Dr. Caplan went on to say that the “real tragedy” was not that there were people who wanted to murder Terri but that there were people who wanted to save her life and thus these people did not want “to honor what she says she wanted.”
In point of fact, Dr. Caplan has no idea what Terri wanted. He is simply repeating what Michael Schiavo, a liar, has said Terri wanted.
When another guest on this program exclaimed to Dr. Caplan, “You are starving a woman to death!….She’s starving to death! This is barbaric! You wouldn’t even starve a dog to death!,” he said: “She will get pain control. She will not suffer. And she can’t feel.” In other words, it’s OK to murder a person as long as that person is murdered painlessly.
In another interview on MSNBC (3/29/05), when asked if he was doing “the right thing” by advocating the murder of Terri by cutting off her food and water feeding tube, Dr. Caplan replied that this must be done because Terri wanted this done. When asked: “Is it ever immoral to remove a feeding tube? Is there a distinction between a feeding tube and a ventilator?,” he said: “That’s an interesting question” — but her never answered this question. He added that because a 1990 Supreme Court decision said a feeding tube is “medical treatment” this “is a treatment that we can discontinue.”
EVIL JUDGE Greer ruled lawlessly it was OK to murder TerriDr. Caplan also said: “Well, fortunately, there aren’t many cases where the family is so much divided and where the facts are so much in contention, as we’ve seen in Terri Schiavo. There are probably a million deaths in hospitals and nursing homes and hospices every year in the U.S. We don’t hear about them. They get worked out between the doctors and the families.”
I don’t doubt for a minute that this is true, that all across America innocent human beings have been and are being murdered as Terri was. This does not however make such murder right.
On the NBC “Today” show (319/05), Dr. Caplan defended the right of a spouse to murder his spouse. He said: “Well, what we do in medicine, when we’re talking about refusing a blood transfusion or refusing dialysis, or in this case, stopping a feeding tube, is, if you don’t have written instructions, you go to the immediate next of kin. And there’s pretty clear order there. It goes husband, adult children, then other relatives, including parents. So there’s no doubt that from a moral point of view, the spouse has the right to make the decision, and he says she told him many times she would not want to be maintained in a severely brain-injured state.”
Really?! Where does a spouse get the “right” to murder his or her spouse? Answer: There is no such “right”— period.
When asked what he would say to those who would suggest that there has to be a more humane way for [Terri] to die than removing her feeding tube and starvation?, Dr, Caplan said:
“Well, remember, the independent doctors who’ve seen her say she’s in a permanent vegetative state. She can—she has reflexes, she can grimace, she can have tears, she can follow light and dark changes, but she can’t suffer. She can’t think, she can’t feel. And so I’m not worried that she’s going to suffer. If we’re worried about that, then the thing to do there is support her with narcotics. Every day in American hospitals, when we take away a ventilator, take away a feeding tube, even disconnect dialysis, we have palliative care. We try to support the person, make sure that they don’t suffer, even as they die.
“I have to say, dying is not a pretty thing. It’s not pretty to die by starvation. It’s not pretty to die, when you say ‘no more air from your respirator.’ So medicine has to be there right to the end to make sure that there is no suffering.”
‘ETHICIST’ CAPLAN- OK to murder Terri if this was done painlessly, without sufferingFinally, speaking of “palliative care,” Dr. Diane Coleman has some interesting things to say about this in testimony (4/19/05) before the Committee on House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. Dr. Coleman, President of a group called “Not Dead Yet,” a national grassroots disability rights organization opposing the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia, said:
“By the time the Schiavo case reached major national attention in 2003, twenty-six national disability organizations had taken a position that Terri Schiavo should receive food and water, due to the highly conflicting evidence of her wishes and the fact that she had not chosen her own guardian. Attached to my written testimony is a three page statement issued by twenty-three such groups in October 2003, and a more recent article co-authored by Steve Eidelman, head of the Arc of the United States, and Stephen Drake, research analyst for Not Dead Yet. We were deeply disturbed to see court after court uphold questionable lower court rulings. This time, 55 bioethicists supported the removal of food and water.
“We were also disturbed that the court allowed most of Terri Schiavo’s rehabilitation funds to be spent on her husband’s lawyers, that she was denied a properly fitted wheelchair, a swallowing test, swallowing therapy, the potential for oral feeding, speech therapy, and the freedom to leave the hospice with her parents, even temporarily. And we were concerned that adult protective services did not intervene, and the state protection and advocacy agency tried but proved powerless. It would appear that the prevalent prejudice that no one would want to live like Terri Schiavo translated into her guardian’s unfettered right to treat her at best as a prisoner, at worst as though she was already dead…
“Why make it easier for guardians to refuse food and water on behalf of persons who cannot speak for themselves? In a 1983 article, over two decades ago, reflecting on the possible outcome of this food and water debate, Daniel Callahan, then director of the prestigious Hastings Center, wrote that “…a denial of nutrition, may, in the long run, become the only effective way to make certain that a large number of biologically tenacious patients actually die.” He further predicted, “Given the increasingly large pool of superannuated, chronically ill, physically marginal elderly, it could well become the nontreatment of choice.” [Daniel Callahan, “On Feeding the Dying,” Hastings Center Report, October 1983, p. 22.] The script was written long ago.
“And please note, many people in nursing homes are on feeding tubes not because they can’t eat orally, but because there are not enough staff to help them eat. One study also found that in for-profit nursing homes, African-Americans with dementia will be taken off hand feeding and put on a feeding tube sooner in the disease process than their white counterparts. Abracadabra, they’re on “life support,” the kind that can be removed…
“Basically, the bioethicists have warped the palliative care movement into a life-ending movement. They’ve had hundreds of millions of dollars to work with, and they’ve used it to build a steamroller that’s decimating the civil and constitutional rights of people in guardianship (emphasis mine.) This affects more than the disability community of today, it affects everyone, directly or through family, sooner or later. There are rules being made for who lives and who dies, but the rule-making and the medical killing are happening behind closed doors. Many things are private family matters, like parental discipline of children, for example, until they go too far. It’s time to call ‘time out,’ to go back to the table and talk about how to build a health care and legal system that respects us all.”
Well, amen. And Dr. Arthur Caplan is a shameful, disgraceful example of one of those individuals who have warped the idea of palliative care using it as an excuse to murder people.