Case analysis on Terri Schiavo - Essay Example

Case Analysis on Terri Schiavo Terri Schiavo died on March 31, 2005. She had been on life support for 13 days without food or water and living in a vegetative state for more than 15 years. The moral and ethical issues were discussed at length prior to her death. The legal, moral, and ethical arguments about 'right to life' versus 'right to die' were complicated and confusing. Introduction The facts of the case are as follows: Ms Schiavo, age 26, collapsed at home on the morning of February 25, 1990.

Medical records showed that she suffered from hypoxic encephalopathy, oxygen starvation to the brain. After a few weeks, she was taken off life support and allowed to breathe on her own. Terri's husband and appointed guardian, Michael, put her into therapy at a Florida nursing facility, then filed and won a medical malpractice suit against her primary care physician and gynecologist in 1992. He had her removed from life support, put into a hospice, and then tried to move on with his life. The main argument of the case on ethics happened between Terri's husband and her parents.

They believed that she could potentially thrive with additional therapy, but her husband decided it was time to let her go. The case was highly-publicized and taxpayer-funded. Mrs. Schiavo, doctors agreed, for all intents and purposes, was clinically “brain dead.” Her case changed the laws on America's spin on handling the final hours of the legally brain dead, even when their hearts are still pumping. I would have sided with the parties who knew that her life ended on the day she was pronounced brain dead.

The infamous and late Dr. Jack Kevorkian would have agreed. Dr. Daniel Eisenberg, an expert on Jewish medical ethics, currently employed by the Department of Radiology at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, PA, would not have agreed. It was purely inhumane to force treatment on a patient who was not just physically impaired, but functionally deceased, and being kept alive only by machines. “Quality of life” and “persistent vegetative state” (PVS) were at the core of the legal argument.

Also at issue was whether or not a court had the right to decide, or if that right should remain with spouses and/or family members. Some remarked that the Schiavo case was a “dark moment” in the history of American health policy—blurring the lines between what life is and is not and taking the place of “God” in determining when a person must die. Others stated it was a shining moment in health policy and medical history because everyone should have the right to die, or the right not to live without a certain “quality of life,” or the ability to live normally, or with some semblance of normality.

It did not mean anyone had the right to kill someone that they didn't think was good enough or fit to live; it simply meant that as the circumstances dictate, the right to die is not only necessary, but morally correct and ethically expedient. Conclusion I doubt that my thoughts on this matter would have impacted the parents or husband of Terri Schiavo any differently than the way it did. According to the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, Terri's wish was to live on with the help of machines and hope-filled therapy in spite of the inability to do so of her own accord.

The Foundation asserts that the young woman was “dehydrated and starved” to death, or euthanized, though doctors knew she was already dead. The point of my opinion is not to argue her parent's rights, or her husband's, but to understand there was no way to avoid the inevitable. The public argument had to happen; the only way to avoid it was for her parents and husband to have agreed on it and not made it public.