MaxedOutMama
Friday, March 25, 2005
What Fools
What fools these mortals be... See this post at Discarded Lies, covering an LA Times article discussing how wonderful you feel while dying from a complete deprivation of food and water. Euphoric. A mild bliss. The problem only comes in, you see, when you try to eat or drink a little! See? If anyone tried to give Terri water they'd just be cheating her out of this lovely high!
Let's just say the people at LA Times should get themselves trepanned for the mind-expanding experience. Why doesn't one of them try going without food and water for four days and see how he or she feels? Definitely the editor who printed this should allow himself such a lovely experience. No - wait! I have a wonderful idea! What we'll do is put a fat pompous old bioethicist in a roomful of starving young journalists, and watch what happens! Film at eleven.
My God, we have become a society of drooling fantasizers who wouldn't recognize reality if it chewed off their feet in a companionable way. And by the way, being eaten alive when you are too weak to run is the merciful way Mother Earth has provided for most mammals to naturally end their lives.
"The word `starve' is so emotionally loaded," Fine said. "People equate that with the hunger pains they feel or the thirst they feel after a long, hot day of hiking. To jump from that to a person who has an end-stage illness is a gigantic leap."Ah, gentle Mother Earth. Gaia. Gee, I wonder why we've been bothering ourselves trying to feed the hungry in the famine areas all these years? We should have just advised them on no account to drink and to relax and enjoy the trip. Who'd want to interrupt a wonderful thing like that?
Contrary to the visceral fears of humans, death by starvation is the norm in nature -- and the body is prepared for it.
"The cessation of eating and drinking is the dominant way that mammals die," said Dr. Ira Byock, director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. "It is a very gentle way that nature has provided for animals to leave this life."
Let's just say the people at LA Times should get themselves trepanned for the mind-expanding experience. Why doesn't one of them try going without food and water for four days and see how he or she feels? Definitely the editor who printed this should allow himself such a lovely experience. No - wait! I have a wonderful idea! What we'll do is put a fat pompous old bioethicist in a roomful of starving young journalists, and watch what happens! Film at eleven.
My God, we have become a society of drooling fantasizers who wouldn't recognize reality if it chewed off their feet in a companionable way. And by the way, being eaten alive when you are too weak to run is the merciful way Mother Earth has provided for most mammals to naturally end their lives.
