THE AFTER MATH When we get around to figuring out all that is now happening to us concerning our current dilemma concerning how best to deal with the problem of life or death for one Terri Schiavo, a Florida citizen. By and large, in spite of some fifteen years of illness of an unusual nature, she was virtually unknown to millions of people who now take every moment of her continuing tenuous hold on life.
The terrible decision to be made if that of depriving another person of life itself by starvation and dehydration. An even as authorities, many of whom we elect and view as our voice in the matter, and now being called upon to either restore the nutritionally loaded tubes to the patient's stomach so she may live.. She has been without such nutritive help for over six days. Just a few days ago we were being told she might last as much a week.
A few minutes ago, I now hear, the last resort action has now proved to have failed. The Governor of Florida has hoped he could get approval for assuming state custody of the patient; restore the tubes and more totally new evaluations of the case including new diagnostic ventures of her maladies and present condition.
When it is all over - and I fear it will be shortly, even as I type this foolish and find myself wondering what my part has been in it all ...it could be ended. After it is history we all have to deal with the math which always comes after such events. We must work with sets of accumulated facts and figures to come up with two answers - not one, but two. One will be: “Why? How did we allow all this to take place?” Second: “How can we prevent it from happening again?
I hope we can earnestly try to avoid merely working to place blame.
There are political, social, religious and ethnic questions which can cause such studies to go awry. I was tempted to include “occupational”, because it has become fashionable to blame the media for all such mis-steps. So much of the criticism of television coverage, in particular is unfair. Critics, so often, fail to realize that TV provides what people say they want.
Only one minor point bothered me in the TV's treatment of this story and that was the heavy use of film clips showing the patient's “actual” physical condition often without dimly visible dates printed in the upper right side of some of the the pictures. Those dates - still being run in today's (March 24th)2005 newscasts - were made August of'01,'02 and '03.
This miss-use of material designed to give a boost to hopes of recovery made the case a battle ground by building factions among viewers. The use of vaguely dated and weakly identified film clips built false hopes among many viewers and their use will,I think, be a major focal point in any serious studies of what went wrong.
A.L.M. March 24, 2005 [c512wds]
