Font Rants on Many Subjects

Re: Saint Shivo....

Why are we so captivated by this case? We are heading into a new age. Death as we now know it may pass away from human experience in the next 20-30 years. Though it may not be the immortality you planned for. How much of your brain and body must pass on before we declare you at your end. For many people a living will, can set forth the conditions by which they should be sustained; and by which they should be terminated. What about those who don't have the living will; or if there is a dispute? Having a judge and jury decide your fate when you haven't committed a crime; seems wrong. Allowing the family to decide may seem less cruel; but what about when the family doesn't agree; such as in the Shivo case. Still having congress step in at the last minute and decide one woman's life or death seems equally wrong.
Things are only more complicated from this point on. When we can regrow your brain, and retrain you; but you won't remember who you were; are you still you? To wake up one day as Mr. So and So; without memories of your parents; your childhood; your wife or husband or children, a new person born at 30 or 50? Is that a life you'd want? Are you still married? Can you still be the parent? Of course it may not be the life you want today as you; but the future you could be perfectly content. What is societies obligation to those people who persist on in a vegetative state? How much of the scarce resources of the world are we obligated to provide you with? I don't want to sound cold hearted; but the nurses sustaining Terry Shivo; could also be serving a homeless person without health insurance whose contracted TB and needs a weekly followup visit to make sure they take their meds; or doing many hundreds of other things that serve broader public health interests.
Finally what happens if fetal stem cell research finds the way to repair Mrs Shivos brain; and she awakens. Will she still be still be the saint of the unborn and persistently vegetating that the right has made her into?