Was Terri's Death Painless and Serene?

Michael Schiavo and his attorney, George Felos, appeared on Nightline in 2005 to discuss their bid to withhold nourishment and hydration from Terri Schiavo for the purpose of ending her life. Michael’s statements included the following assertions

Terri will not be starved to death. Her nutrition and hydration will be taken away. This happens across this country every day.

Death through removing somebody's nutrition is very painless. That has been brought to the courts many of times. Doctors have come in and testified. It is a very painless procedure.

I hope that the viewing audience was able to see through Michael's absurd suggestion that withholding nourishment for the purpose of ending life is somehow different than starving a person to death.

Michael also claimed that his wife’s death would be "painless" and Nightline asked no follow-up questions nor produced any rebuttal witnesses. They could have interviewed Kate Adamson who at one time was in a coma and survived eight days without nourishment. Here is what she said,

ADAMSON: When the feeding tube was turned off for eight days, I thought I was going insane. I was screaming out in my mind, "Don't you know I need to eat?" And even up until that point, I had been having a bagful of Ensure as my nourishment that was going through the feeding tube. At that point, it sounded pretty good. I just wanted something. The fact that I had nothing, the hunger pains overrode every thought I had.

Nightline could have mentioned that forced starvation is considered torture and a violation of international law [more].

According to medical experts, after her feeding tube is removed, Mrs. Schiavo will experience extreme pain and significant psychological distress during the two weeks that her starvation-execution is expected to take.

Her skin, tongue and lips will crack due to dehydration. Schiavo will likely suffer chronic nosebleeds as mucous membranes dry out, followed by heaving and vomiting as the stomach lining dries out.

Her mouth is expected to develop painful ulcers. As Schiavo's brain is deprived of fluid, she is expected to suffer grand mal seizures. - Newsmax

And, Nightline could have asked any nurse that has actually observed the "procedure" described as "painless" by Michael Schiavo. Here is what one such individual wrote on her blog:

All ethics put aside, all arguments about what is a life and what isn’t-the very worst part of what I do is watching others die a slow death. It is horrible and I don’t deal well with it.

By removing nutrition and hydration via the tubes, patients take days to die. They literally dry out. There skin becomes dry and scaly; their lips dry out and then the mouth can no longer open. The person either rolls in the fetal position and stays that way, or they lay out flat. They no longer void and their eyes become sunk in very deep.

I won’t go into anymore details as it is kind of gross, but it isn’t a pretty thing. Usually the docs and nurses do a “terrific” job with pain killers. The dying, supposedly, feel no pain. I don’t think that is ever true. I see them moaning and I have seen little tears rolling out of their dry eyes. The last patient I witnessed being put to death like this took 3 weeks to go. How sweet.

I hate to use the term “put to death” but that is what it is. No need to beat around the bush here and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t that simple. It’s wrong and it’s barbaric. Life is life, and anyone alive who has not made their wishes known should be allowed to live. As to quality of life, who are we to decide what that is? - AndRightlySo

The grim reality is that murder through starvation is immoral, ugly and painful no matter how euthanasia activists attempt to dress it up. The complicity of ABC News in promoting without question Michael's characterization of killing via starvation in a stinging indictment against the network.

In his book, Wesley J. Smith describes the intense suffering imposed on those being starved to death. [source: Newsmax, Sept. 23, 2003]

"Proponents of dehydration contend that deaths by dehydration are peaceful," Smith wrote. Noting that "the patients we are discussing are not terminally ill" and that those who are conscious can feel hunger and thirst, Smith quotes Dr. William Burke, a neurologist in St. Louis, who described the agonizing process.

"A conscious person would feel it (dehydration) just as you and I would. They will go into seizures. Their skin cracks, their tongue cracks, their lips crack. They may have nosebleeds because of the drying of the mucous membranes, and heaving and vomiting might ensue because of the drying out of the stomach lining. They feel the pangs of hunger and thirst. Imagine going one day without a glass of water. Death by dehydration takes ten to fourteen days. It is an extremely agonizing death."

The next step, Smith predicts, will be the abandonment of dehydration in favor a much simpler and faster way to kill – death by lethal injection, now popular in prison death chambers.

In his book Smith concludes by asking if we will "take the hard turn down the slippery slope towards a coarsening of our view of the afflicted, the dying, the chronically ill, the disabled, and those in pain or depression, to the point where we feel they have a duty to die and get out of the way?

"Will we choose to love each other, or abandon each other?"

In the case of Terri Schiavo, the authorities have chosen abandonment.

For more, see Killing Through Starvation is Painless?. A witness to numerous starvation/killings writes,

I won’t go into anymore details as it is kind of gross, but it isn’t a pretty thing. Usually the docs and nurses do a “terrific” job with pain killers. The dying, supposedly, feel no pain. I don’t think that is ever true. I see them moaning and I have seen little tears rolling out of their dry eyes. The last patient I witnessed being put to death like this took 3 weeks to go. How sweet.