Why do Repukes say a ventilator is different from a feeding tube?

[Proud2BAmurkin]

people need food and water AND air. What's the difference between someone who needs AIR provided to survive and someone who needs feeding?

The difference is that they need to cover Idiot Son's hypocritical ass for the Texas law and it's just not the same when it's a black baby who needs the life sustaining treatment.

[trotsky]

1. You can't look at either without considering the state of the brain.

Someone in a coma generally doesn't need help breathing, but does need a feeding tube. And we do this because scans generally show that their brain is intact, and people DO "wake up" from comas.

In Terri's case, there's no higher brain left. She is brain stem being kept alive artificially.

[sui generis]

2. it's duration

when you disconnect someone from ventilation or cardiac support they die within minutes. When you disconnect someone from food and water it takes them a while to die. Whether or not you agree they feel pain, from a medical perspective what happens internally is horrifying.

I'm just answering your question - not taking a position.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

5. but they say it is a completely different life-death situation

the two situations look pretty similar all other things equal

[Blue_In_AK]

3. I think they draw the distinction because removing air

permits the person to die relatively quickly. They're upset because removing the feeding tube allows her to linger on for a couple of weeks and they see that as somehow "cruel." I don't agree with their logic, but I think that's what is is.

[cynatnite]

4. One is a machine and the other is not

A lot of people have made made that mistake

[Proud2BAmurkin]

6. why does that matter to the life-death question

:shrug:

[cynatnite]

15. It's semantics

the repukes argue that holding back water and food is barbaric even though it is delivered by articial means. If the discussion with a repub gets on this subject you can argue the delivery is still artificial and you will be right.

A ventilator is artificial even though it delivers oxygen...something we all require to stay alive. It's the same extact thing with tube feeding.

The way I see it repubs who want to keep her alive will not win the argument and don't have a leg to stand on. All they will :cry: about is those darn activist judges some of which are republican and have been appointed by republicans.

[BlueEyedSon]

9. In theory, a respirator could be manual, and feeding by machine/automatic.

it's a weak argument

[noonwitch]

7. Because not everyone needing a feeding tube is in her state

There are cancer patients who have them, people undergoing treatment for various conditions who have them. Sometimes they are temporary, for people getting treated for intestinal diseases and such.

[onenote]

11. respirators and heart machines can be temporary too

sometimes used during surgery....

onenote

[Jack Rabbit]

8. Because Bush signed the Texas law

That makes it different.

Bush is always right. (Say that in Italian.)

[caledesi]

10. Because they only understand "simple" concepts....

ventilators are too abstract for these knuckle-draggers.

[Kashka-Kat]

12. because inability to breathe or lungs/heart not functioning indicates

(usually) a greater degree of incapacitation/ lack of viability of organism. Lack of ability to swallow is relatively minor, caused by any number of things--some serious, some not so serious.

Not just repukes make that distinction.

Granted, death by suffocation is not a pretty picture either.

[K-W]

13. Because people react different emotionally to them so they wedged it.

They fought to seperate the two in peoples minds and in the law and to some extent succeeded because they cant win this battle, but they can make things difficult.

[LisaL]

14. Because when you turn off a ventilator, the person dies

right away. When you turn off a feeding tube, the person can linger for a long time. The person does not need a feeding tube to survive, rather, it needs food delivered via feeding tube.

[cynatnite]

16. Not always

Patients have been known to linger for a while even after taken off a ventilator. Also, a ventilator doesn't always mean that a patient can't recover. Many have been on ventilators and completely recovered.