Kill me now

Actually this is about Terri Schiavo. Take a look at http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/ and the one below it. Of course I don't have any links to sites or blogs talking about the other side of it so I don't have a fair basis for comparison. But then even after finding out about the facts of the case I think I'd side with the husband. If the state law is that he's her custodian and he says her decision was DNR then that sounds like the end of it to me. My first thought was "how could her parents want her to suffer like this?". Then I find a CNN piece with more of the facts of the case (at least they claimed the information was "facts"). I found it interesting that every "medical" opinion that I read was rendered by a lawyer. Now I'm not a doctor (nor have I ever played one on TV) nor a lawyer but I have friends who are (no one person is both). Based on the little I do know, the two professions seem pretty dissimilar. So a lawyer rendering a medical opinion strikes me as pretty oxymoronic.

I can't help but think that the whole situation arose because of some ambulance chasing lawyers got ahold of each side (or even just one side since the other side would then have to get a lawyer) way back when and they don't want to let go of their sugar daddy. 15 years is a long time to go with no improvement despite the claims of the religious right (as long as she breaths and we pray there's hope).

Then the politicians jump on the bandwagon. I maintain that they're doing this so they don't have to do any real work. Work which might require that they take responsibility for their actions or actually make a decision and stand behind it in front of their constituents. Ryan and I were talking about the topic the other day when he was looking at the "Terri Schiavo blog" (apparently a site that's pretty damn funny and incredibly wrong). He was incensed by the amount of money being wasted when I offered my opinion. He's right, while it's sometimes safe to keep politicians busy with this sort of thing (so they don't screw something else up), there are a lot of judges, their staffs and the like, who could be doing things which help society. How far are we from tyranny if the government interceeds in this case. If they can tell me when to die then all the lesser freedoms are, indeed, lost. (yea, that does sound pretty melodramatic but if take it at face value how will we react when they do take some more freedoms away?)

I did hear of one good thing which resulted from this fiasco. More and more people are putting their wishes down on paper, just in case. And overall I think the prevention of litigation is a good thing, especially in this country. Now if we could just stop idiots from getting elected ...