Let’s subpoena a woman who’s been in a coma for 15 years. That would be a good one. That would show we are serious people.
From the report in The Washington Post:
Doctors removed the feeding tube of America’s most famous brain-damaged patient after a Florida judge rejected efforts by Republican leaders in Congress to stall the end of her feeding. Unless congressional Republicans can get the tube restored, medical experts said, Schiavo will die within two weeks.
The removal came after a dramatic sequence of legal feints that began Friday morning when the House Government Reform Committee issued subpoenas to Schiavo, a woman who has been unable to speak for 15 years; her husband, Michael Schiavo; and several doctors and employees of her hospice, ordering them to appear at a congressional hearing March 25. Then, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee formally invited Michael and Terri Schiavo to testify on Monday. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s statement pointedly noted that it is a federal crime for anyone to interfere with a person’s testimony before Congress.
The maneuvering set off a power struggle pitting Congress’s top leaders against Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer, who ruled against them.
This really makes me sick. First of all, I have two patients that feeding tube feedings were stopped by the patient or their family that each lived 6/7 weeks. At no time were they in pain. Yes their mouths got dry and their bodies starting shutting down as it does when any one dies. Talk about inhumane. What is with the Republicans or Democrats and by whose authority do they get to decide. It is the decision of her husband by law as the next of kin. The so-called million dollars at stake has long since been spent on legal fees anyway. I like being a hospice nurse because I believe that keeping people artificially alive is morally, legally, ethically a sin. A Mortal sin if you are Catholic. And this stupid country puts Dr. Kevorkian in jail and lets congress stay out of jail. What’s up with this?