here's to fox news

i wasn't planning to write anything more about Terri Schiavo, but i came across something so far on the fringe that i had to comment. it seems tv psychic John Edward appeared on a Fox news show recently and gave his views on her state of mind. you can watch the clip here

http://clips.mediamatters.org/video/foxfriends-200503250006.mov

or here

http://mediamatters.org/static/video/foxfriends-200503250006.wmv

unfortunately, the sound is out on my office pc so i couldn't hear anything. i'll try to see the clip again when i'm home. until then, i'll content myself with this transcribed excerpt:

From the March 24 edition of Fox & Friends:

DOOCY: You mentioned the Terri Schiavo case. Some might wonder, "Well, you know what, I wonder if he could communicate with her."

EDWARD: I do believe that the soul, the consciousness, can communicate when they're in a state, whether it be a mentally incapacitated person, someone who's in a coma. It's a consciousness, and the soul has a living consciousness. So whether it's in a physical vehicle or not, there is still the ability to connect. Many people will have what they call out-of-body experiences, or astral dreams. Two very living people, that are healthy, could have a kind of connection in a dream state that can be validated. So why not somebody who's in this case?

DOOCY: So she may not be able to talk with her brain, but she can with her soul --

EDWARDS: But she's clear on what's going -- and I can tell you that she's definitely clear on what's happening now around her.

here's to anonymous

I wasn't going to comment about the reservation high school shootings in Minnesota, but then I saw the news story naming a juvenile who's been arrested in connection with the case, based on a law enforcement leak to the AP, and became so disgusted with this invasion of privacy that I couldn't help myself. I then had the poor judgement to look at a yahoo message board about this story, and found it overrun with trolls anonymously posting the most offensive slurs imaginable about Indians. here's a couple where just the title of the message suffices:

MINORITIES COPYING FROM JEWS
and
USA WAS PEACEFUL BEFORE INDIANS CAME

apparently, what many of these trolls are worked up about is that some of the victims of the shooting, teachers perhaps, were caucasian.

this was my post, destined to be drowned out by the clamoring of a playground for trolls:

AP

it's outrageous that a "law enforcement source, on condition of anonymity," would leak the name of a juvenile suspect, and that AP would see fit to publish it. what happened to privacy? why doesn't AP name this public-minded anonymous source, so we can all give him the *gratitude* he deserves?

incidentally, the terms of service for this message board claim that *hateful, or racially, or otherwise objectionable* messages may be removed. i guess yahoo must have a narrow definition of hateful, judging by the messages it's allowing here.

Sun Hudson followup

The physician-in-chief of Texas Children's Hospital and a bioethicist at Baylor Medical College jointly published in the Houston Chronicle a rather self-serving, condescending, and possibly misleading justification of their decision to disconnect a baby boy from a ventilator. the full text can be found at this URL:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3103113

The following excerpt seems mostly factual: (i say seems because i have no medical training)

Little Sun Hudson was born with a defect so overwhelming that most infants with it die before they are born or at birth. The name of his disease — thanatophoric dysplasia — literally means death-bearing. His lungs and his rib cage were tiny and there is no medical treatment that would allow them to grow so that he could someday breathe on his own. Keeping him on a ventilator meant keeping him anes- thetized. He never had a chance at real life.

The rest of the editorial strongly implies that any parent in full possession of her senses would choose euthanasia for a baby thus afflicted.

So I did what a curious, net-savvy person might be expected to do when confronted with an unfamiliar medical term: I googled it. The first site that turned up, eMedicine.com, had this to say:

Mortality/Morbidity: Although the literature documents several reports of survival into childhood, TD virtually is always lethal in the neonatal period. Respiratory insufficiency secondary to reduced thoracic capacity or compression of the brainstem leads to death.

Sex: Males and females are affected equally.

Age: TD is lethal in neonates; however, long-term survival has been reported.

Not quite the death sentence the Hospital administration portrayed. eMedicine gives a frequency of 1 case per 10,000-35,000 live births. I also doubt that eMedicine has a pro-life bias. Here's what it says under Patient Education:

If a fetus is affected by TD and if the pregnancy has proceeded past the period during which a therapeutic abortion can take place, discuss aggressive and nonaggressive management frankly with the parents.

Elsewhere, it implies that nonaggressive management consists of palliative treatment. The eMedicine article, which I believe is merely stating current medical practice as opposed to advocating any particular approach, can be accessed here:
http://www.emedicine.com/PED/topic2233.htm

extraordinary measures

I was reading about the case of a 6 month old boy named Sun Hudson, who died last week after being disconnected from life support against the wishes of his penniless mother, under the provisions of the Texas law on "Advance Directives" signed in 1999 by then governor G. W. Bush.
[ The law itself can be found at the following URL:
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/docs/HS/content/htm/hs.002.00.000166.00.htm

and an article on the case is at this URL:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3084934
]

I don't have the time to go through the statute and try to make sense of it, but I do note that it seems to list both "Artificial nutrition and hydration" and "mechanical breathing machines" in the category of "artificial life support." Here's an illustrative paragraph:

(10) "Life-sustaining treatment" means treatment
that, based on reasonable medical judgment, sustains the life of a
patient and without which the patient will die. The term includes
both life-sustaining medications and artificial life support, such
as mechanical breathing machines, kidney dialysis treatment, and
artificial nutrition and hydration. The term does not include the
administration of pain management medication or the performance of
a medical procedure considered to be necessary to provide comfort
care, or any other medical care provided to alleviate a patient's
pain.

It puzzles me that there's been no outcry over this case as there has been in the Terri Schiavo case. As I understand it, many people consider an assisted breathing apparatus to be an extraordinary measure while a feeding tube isn't, but it troubles me that this sort of semantic hair-splitting can govern a life-or-death medical decision. How much difference does it make to an infant whether he chokes to death or starves to death? And might the outcome have been different if Texas Children's Hospital hadn't barred the media on the pretext of protecting privacy? Here's what his mother had to say about this:

"I wanted y'all to see my son for yourself," Hudson told reporters. "So you could see he was actually moving around. He was conscious."

[after i wrote the preceding, another alarming possibility came to mind. so i googled "sun hudson" & black, and found any number of blogs pointing out that mother & child were black. does that account in part for lack of public and media interest?]

new kid on the block

for the reader who doesn't know personally the individual calling himself yitwail, i must provide a little background information to put this blog entry in a proper context. in conventional terms, i'm the owner of a Goffin Cockatoo (also called a Tanimbar Corella by some pedants). The goffin is the smallest true cockatoo, not to be confused with cockatiels, which have some cockatoo-like traits, but are much smaller, with much shorter life-spans and little if any talking ability.

without further ado, making a long story short, cutting to the chase, and other forms of beating around the bush, Maury, our goffin, is about to become a big brother. in a few weeks, our household will welcome a new arrival, a Meyer's Parrot. for some time, my partner & i were pondering acquiring another bird to provide more stimulation & companionship to Maury, who is a delightful character most of the time, but can become loud and ornery at times as a way of seeking attention we think.

on our way to LA to attend a concert, we dropped off Maury at the bird shop for one night of lodging, and visited some of the birds on display like we normally do, when a little parrot flew off its perch and practically landed at my feet. i managed to coax him/her to step up onto my finger, and was immediately struck by the beautiful plumage and its composure, considering i had just scared it off its perch. once i got him/her back on the perch, and called my parter JM over to have a look, i examined the sign hanging over the perch, and although i'd never heard of a meyer's parrot, i was impressed by a surprisingly low price, and a surprisingly long life span for such a small bird. it turned out he/she was still being handfed, and so hadn't reached full size, but it looked mature because it didn't have the patchy feathers sticking out from the head in all directions look that many young parrots have. i also understand that its feathers are going to change color a bit as it matures. one final intriguing tidbit of information about this little being is that it hatched on Christmas day of 2004.

when we talked to the store staff about the bird, we found out it had a hatchmate that had already been sold. at that point, i decided impulsively to buy the bird. afterwards, i did some research on meyer's parrots, and learned that they might be just about the ideal pet parrot, for anyone not needing a bird with spectacular plumage or talking ability. actually, the meyer's has extremely beautiful plumage, but it's much too small to be called spectacular, and they're accomplished mimics that can talk, but they also have highly desirable traits of their own, such as a pleasant disposition, making quiet, pleasant sounds, and an endearing fondness for lying on its back with its feet in the air.

the biggest uncertainty facing the new arrival is how he/she will get along with Maury. they'll have separate cages, because Maury's cage is a little too large for a Meyer's, but we hope they'll enjoy spending time together when we let them out. i'll be happy to provide a foto or two if requested, once the baby's weaned and moved into new digs.

million dollar spoiler

thanks to an editorial cartoon i saw the other day, i already know the conclusion to the film million dollar baby without having seen it. the director, clint eastwood, has been criticized for taking a controversial moral stance, whereas he absolves himself by pointing out that he merely follows the plot of the short story by writer f.x. toole on which the film is based. a compromise could have left the conclusion open-ended, with a character agonizing over a moral quandary, but perhaps that would have been an artistic copout. in any event, changing the ending to a happy, noncontroversial one would have diminished the film. note that i have studiously avoided directly mentioning what the controversy is about, lest i give away the ending to someone still thinking of seeing it.

i'm unsure myself whether i will see it. it's been many years since i was addicted to watching sports on tv, and when i first cut back on my viewing i started with boxing, because i found it morally problematic. that shouldn't keep me from watching a fictional representation, but it does make me look toward alternative films.