Half a Mind

I find it fascinating that with a brain mass half that of a normal adult human, Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegitative state and blind. My pet cockatiel, Peeper, has a brain way less than one tenth the size of a human, and yet she has decent vision, definitely responds to stimuli (though more often with a yell than a smile), and can feed herself (as long as I provide the food or she finds it on the floor), though I wouldn't say she can improve any with therapy. Humans supposedly only use one tenth of their brain capability, and yet reducing the size to half the norm renders us incapable of function. This probably means that the "tenth" we use is evenly distributed throughout the brain, and it's not that we can isolate the parts that are useful.

This is all, of course, no evidence either way whether cessation of life support was justified. The parents' (the Schindlers') main argument that she responded to them and could improve with treatment is definitely undermined, but the science behind Schiavo's atrophied brain says nothing about morality--science is not equipped to make value judgements.

I read in a BBC article quite some time ago about the feeding tube. While I usually think of it as being something that snakes down the patient's throat (nasal or nasogastric feeding tube--it actually goes in through the nose), in Schiavo's case they actually poked a hole into her stomach and "fed" her directly like that.

Pope John Paul II had a nasal feeding tube inserted three days prior to his death (NPR timeline). The Roman Catholic church's stance is that food is a basic right that should not be denied to anyone. Refusing to feed someone (Terri Schiavo) is murder. Refusing food for yourself is suicide.

An NPR article I heard (I can't find the link, but these two are related:NPR1 and NPR2) argued that the "food" inserted into feeding tubes is a carefully formulated blend that has more in common with medicine than things "normal" people eat.

Interesting, it appears that the church's stance on medicine is different than that on food. Medicine is a mercy, but not a requirement. If you don't administer medicine, you're cruel and evil, but not a murderer. If you refuse medicine for yourself, it is not suicide, just refusal of extraordinary measures which could very well be against the will of God anyway. Also on NPR (can't find a reference for it--let me know if you have one), I heard that prior to his death Pope John Paul II refused kidney dialysis treatment. I do have a reference for the fact that two days before his death, when running a high fever, he "was neither rushed to the hospital, nor offered life support, apparently in accordance with his wishes to die in the Vatican" (BBC).

Ponder that for a while.