None of the reports I have read said she was brain dead, do you have a link? It did state her brain had shrunk to half it's size and she had irreversible brain damage...but I can't find where she was ever declared brain dead.
I guess I should be more clear, since using layman's terms like "brain dead" is ambiguous. What I'm referring to is her cerebrum. Her autopsy showed the bulk of her cerebrum was not only infarcted (dead), but that the infarcted tissue had been replaced by fluid, something that is indicative of the infarction being chronic, and not acute. Involuntary function aren't contrilled by the cerebrum. They're actually controlled by the brain stem.
Anyhoo, that's a long-winded way of saying that there was no formal activity in the cerebrum. Most of the cerebrum was long dead. No cognition, consciousness, feeling, thinking, etc.
Why not err on the side of caution and give these patients the benefit of the doubt. After all, how much trouble would it be to continue to feed or otherwise care for these people until they die naturally?
The concenses, though, is whether a person has the right to choose to not have lifesaving or lifepreserving procedures done. We generally concur that they do. When a person is in such a state, it befalls that person's spouse to make that determination.
It all boiled down to Mr. Schivo wanted to move ( he already had a girlfriend) on and did not want to be seen divorcing his wife in her condition so he had her killed. oh the depth of depravity.
No doubt about it, the guy was a pig. But it's a matter of record that he first wished to excercise termination of lifesaving procedures back in 1993, before he had a girlfriend. Had he not backed out of it then, this would have been an issue. As much of a pic as he was, the responsibility for making medical directives was still his. He even gave power to make that decision to the court rather than him making the decision himself.
