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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (759590)	12/26/2013 12:36:46 PM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Recommended By Brumar89 Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1582201

>> The real problem with e-cigarettes, according to [New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley] and other supporters of the ban, is that they look too much like the real thing. I'm really not sure about any law prohibiting an activity solely because it "looks like" another [banned] activity and may therefore make it harder to enforce the originally banned activity.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (759590)	12/26/2013 1:20:09 PM
From: Alex MG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1582201

yeah, why can't the government just leave us alone? oops, America's Taliban govt officials, aka religious right assholes, strike again Texas hospital refuses to allow man to take his brain-dead, pregnant wife off of life support deathandtaxesmag.com Eric Munoz awoke at 2am on November 26th to find Marlise Munoz, his 14-week pregnant wife on the kitchen floor, unconscious and unresponsive. He performed CPR and called 911. Doctors told him she’d likely had a pulmonary embolism—a blood clot that traveled to the lungs, leaving her without oxygen for over an hour, leaving the 33-year-old woman completely brain-dead with zero chance of recovery. They don’t know how long the fetus went without oxygen or nutrients. Both Munoz and his wife are paramedics, and this was something they’d discussed before. Neither of them ever wanted to be a vegetable on life support. They made their wishes crystal clear in their living wills. However, Marlise Munoz has been on life support since November 26th. Why? Because Texas has a law saying that, regardless of a patient’s wishes in their living will, if she is pregnant, she has to remain on life support. The fetus was not viable when Munoz fell ill, and it is not viable now. However, the law does not require that the fetus be viable, only that it exist. Understandably, both Eric Munoz and Lynne Machado, Marlise’s mother, are extremely upset. Machado told NBC News, “The doctors told us that even if a pregnant woman has a DNR or a living will, the law supersedes that. So any pregnant woman must be kept alive with life support because of the fetus. We had never heard of this and we wanted to get the information out there. No family should have to go through this. It’s been pure hell.” According to a 2012 study by the Center for Women’s Policy Studies, 31 states have laws on the books that require hospitals to keep women alive against their wishes if they happen to be pregnant. Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, says ”What is quite stunning about these statutes for women is that they don’t even take into account a woman’s pain. A woman could be in excruciating pain and near death’s door and they still would force her to suffer. These are extraordinary laws creating separate unequal status for pregnant women in which they lose control of medical decision making, the right to bodily integrity and right to be free of excruciating pain.” The hospital, while saying they are sympathetic, state that they have a “responsibility as a good corporate citizen here in Tarrant County to also provide the highest quality care we can for all of our patients.” They explain that they have to do what they are doing here because of the law in Texas. So, not only does this guy have to deal with the abject horror of losing his wife and unborn child, he has to deal with his wife being brain-dead and on life support for 20 weeks, and pay for it. Which is a hell of a lot of money. Life support usually costs several thousand a day. He will probably be in debt for the rest of his life, unless he is a kajillionaire. Which, as a paramedic, he is likely not. In the highly unlikely event that the doctors are able to bring the child to term, he or she will likely have suffered some pretty serious brain damage. Which means that Munoz will have piles of debt and a special needs child to take care of. In addition to the 18-month-old child he already has. ‘Murica! If you ask me, the State of Texas should absolutely be required to cover the costs for this. To put this man through this living hell and charge him for it is freaking insane. You want to force people to keep their loved ones on life support because you’re so madly in love with fetuses? Then you pay for it. This should not even be a question. If it’s the state making the decision here, it’s the state that should be footing the bill.