Pro
“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