[Msoto]

>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.
>
The humanistic resource for caring for such a patient is non existent. The monerary resource probably exists...however I believe every shilling spent one way has an opportunity cost...back to basic economics and that opportunity cost is far heavier than politics and more ethical in my perspective.
>
>
>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.

In US i am told they get to learn take courses, even graduate. Prisoners live their life as they would in the outside world, the only thing I think most lack is freedom. I think thats very pessimistic to expect that all criminals in any maximum prison are hard core and there is no possibility of reformation. That is why prisons exist because there is a possibility of reformation. Whereas for the vegetative state as of now there is no hope of restarting the thinking unless a miracle occurs.

>
>>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

Such an exercise granted you great insight into people with dementia. I cannot challenge that insight for I have never worked with them. However back to my humanistic perspective, I think with great patience, perserverence, determination, relapse rates of dementia can be reduced and so can reformation from it, they still have after all their thinking patterns which are only disoriented to a very high level. This view-point of course is highly optimistic might it be implemented?
>age rather than be in that state, but this should not made an
>option for the carers or relatives.