[Coach]

Msoto,

>I am not saying the plug should be pulled every time, but I
>believe that those resources for maintaining a vegetative
>state could be used elsewhere.

I don't think that it is about 'resources' because the USA military budget can feed, cloathe, educate, give shelter and cure hundreds of millions of people around the world. If it's about 'recourses being used elsewhere', they could be used in helping the millions of illiterate people in the USA, the millions who live in descpicable conditions esp minorities like African-Americans etc. It's not about resources in this case mate.




Why do life prisoners receive
>food and work...because in their own cycle of life within the
>prison they are productive.

We are still talking about USA here aren't we? What is productive about locking millions of people who are beaten up, sodomised, hardenned by being around other criminals and those who are released at some stage become more hard-core than when they went in? Visit any maximum prison and you'll not see any productivity there but beefed up criminals.



>It is my perception that people who can think can maintain
>their own bodily functions. Even people suffering dementia,
>unless they have catatonic schizophrenia they are able to
>think either coherently or incoherently. It is this ability to
>think that they have that makes it worthwhile caring for them.
>Thats my two cents
>

Dementia is a disorder that has many different stages often with diffuse diagnosis. Advanced dementia is more common than you think. I've worked with patients in this state and it was the most challenging thing I have ever done! Some lie in bed 24 hrs with their contractured limbs, screaming all day. They don't know night from day and don't recognise even their own children. Some are incapable of swallowing and the food (or liquids) they are given end up in the lungs. This causes severe aspiration pneumonia which eventually leads to some patient being fed through a feeding tube or some left to die. I've always said that it is much better to die even at middle age rather than be in that state, but this should not made an option for the carers or relatives.