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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (106581)	3/29/2005 4:14:27 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793629

I took it upon myself to look for her CAT on line. amptoons.com It is obvious that her brain is severely damaged, and thanks for the interview. I've got some catching up to do, so will refrain from commenting until I read Alastair's link and do a bit more research on my own. M

To: Lane3 who wrote (106581)	3/29/2005 7:44:16 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 793629

In the FWIW department, here is the Bio and a blog re Dr Ronald Cranford that was speaking to the msnbc program: marlowesshade.blogspot.com Cranford is a member of the board of directors of the Choice in Dying Society, which promotes doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia. He was also a featured speaker at the 1992 national conference of the Hemlock Society. The group recently changed its name to End of Life Choices. Dr Cranford's bio says that he teachs at the University of Minnesota Medical School. I'm sure it is a fine institution, but if Dr Cheshire's involvement with the Mayo Clinic doesn't get him enough medical prestige to be considered "renowned", then Dr Cranford has no call for this kind of arrogance: Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist and medical ethicist at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has examined Ms. Schiavo on behalf of the Florida courts and declared her to be irredeemably brain-damaged, said, "I have no idea who this Cheshire is," and added: "He has to be bogus, a pro-life fanatic. You'll not find any credible neurologist or neurosurgeon to get involved at this point and say she's not vegetative." For what it's worth, UMinn Medical didn't make any of the Top 20 lists I saw, while the Mayo Clinic's teaching program was usually in the top five. But the glaring inequity of this aspect of the debate is that in articles like the Times and Dr Whelan's, the obvious bias of Dr Cranford is never an issue. His views are treated as mainstream, and I'm getting the terrible sense that they will soon be. This is what he is proposing: The United States has thousands or tens of thousands of patients in vegetative states; nobody knows for sure exactly how many," he wrote. "But before long, this country will have several million patients with Alzheimer's dementia. The challenges and costs of maintaining vegetative state patients will pale in comparison to the problems presented by Alzheimer's disease." The answer, he suggested, was physician-assisted suicide. "So much in medicine today is driving the public towards physician-assisted suicide," he wrote. "Many onlookers are dismayed by doctors' fear of giving families responsibility in these cases; our failure to appreciate that families suffer a great deal too in making decisions; our archaic responses to pain and suffering; our failure to accept death as a reality and an inevitable outcome of life; our inability to be realistic and humane in treating irreversibly ill people. All of this has shaken the public's confidence in the medical profession." He blamed "right-to-lifers" and "disability groups" for discouraging families from making the choice for euthanasia. He applauded European values that embrace euthanasia. Despite my issues with the Baby Boomer generation as a whole, I don't take any satisfaction in the irony that the only thing that might stand in the way of the euthanizing of as many as a million of them is the beleaguered band of Christians and pro-life advocates that they fought all their lives to oppose. 888888888888888 Bio For Ronald Cranford, MD....certainly on the side of right to die issues.... bioethics.umn.edu