[extropy-chat] Thoughts on Schiavo

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

Quoting Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com>:

> Lets make one thing perfectly clear: Terri Schiavo's responsiveness is
> no less than the responsiveness of Stephen Hawking. Stephen just has a
> lot of high tech gizmos he's had years to learn to use to make himself
> useful in the world. Terri has been denied the same opportunities by
> her husband and remains in a condition that Stephen would be in today
> given a similar level of neglect.
>
> Now, this being established, if we imagine instead that Stephen Hawking
> were in that hospital instead of Terri, what would you do about what is
> being done to him?

### Mike, are you saying that Ms Schiavo has ALS?

As far as I know you are not a neurologist, and certainly you have not
personally examined her. Yet you state with great conviction that her
physicians are grossly incompetent, and could, after doing the H&P and
reviewing results of laboratory investigations, confuse ALS and PVS. This would
put their skills at the level of not even a resident, or a first-year nursing
student but at the level of the hospital janitor.

Aren't you overstepping your limitations here?

Rafal