Saturday, June 04, 2005

Essay on Terri Schiavo's Case

Paul McHugh, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, discusses the meaning of the Schiavo case in his essay. While he apparently has missed some of the disputes about certain 'facts' in the case, he does seem to have a handle on the opposing world views involved, and the practical effect on patients and medical professionals.
How could such a thing happen? This, after all, is not Nazi Germany, where the culture of death foreshadowed in the awful title of that book would reach such horrendous public proportions. But we in this country have our own, homegrown culture of death, whose face is legal and moral and benignly individualistic rather than authoritarian and pseudo-scientific.

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