Pro

Sean Morrison, MD, Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Care at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, in an interview with The New York Times for a Mar. 25, 2005 article entitled "Neither 'Starvation' Nor the Suffering It Connotes Applies to Schiavo, Doctors Say," explained:

“Evoking concepts like starvation is especially powerful…[because] we are so familiar with what it feels like to be hungry and have experienced the heartbreak of images from famine-ravaged regions…

Removing a feeding tube for a patient in a persistent vegetative state, which the courts have determined Ms. Schiavo is in, based on scientific evidence, is vastly different from a conscious person’s being refused meals…

No one is denying this woman food and water… People in a persistent vegetative state…have no knowledge of food.

They don’t recognize food… If you put food in their mouth, it would sit there until they took a breath, and then that food would go down into the lungs…

Withdrawal of nutrition is a common method for ending life, and many terminally ill patients choose that course…

I have never had a patient who has stopped eating and drinking who has expressed that they are hungry.”

Mar. 25, 2005