Poll: Would you like for your body to be kept alive if you were in a peristant vegetative state?

Would you like to be kept alive if you were in a persistent vegetative state?

A persistant vegetative state is "a state in which the cerebral cortex � the thinking, feeling part of the brain � stops working. People in this condition cannot understand anything that is going on around them and cannot communicate or make voluntary movements. However, the more primitive part of their brain � the brain stem � is largely unaffected." Body Story Glossery

I don't even want to be kept alive in my current state.

But no. I don't have any great attachment to my life. If I can't even do anything? Let me go.

I put it�in my�cover letter� when I applied for a job at Frito-Lay and they hired me!

I was in one for... wait.. how long did I work for RCN, again?

This is exactly the results I expected. I've never met anyone who wanted to be kept alive under those circumstances. Yet when it happens to a loved one it often isn't the decision people make. People find it difficult to pull the plug on a loved one even when that is exactly what the Golden Rule says to do. To do unto others as you'd wish others to do unto you.

One think everyone should do is make these wishes clear to their immediate family and friends and to put it in writing.

Unplug me.

Haha!! I knew you were really a robot!!

I prefer the term "Electronic American"

Seeing as it really wouldn't matter to me anyway, do whatever the fuck you want with me. I wouldn't really care. For all intents and purposes, I'm gone. If it would make someone happy to keep my corpse biologically alive, let them do it.

I don't believe in souls. I don't think afterlife/reincarnation is plausible. Once my brain is gone, I'm gone. All that's left is meat and meat doesn't have an opinion.

I happen to believe in souls (yes, even though we are a collection of biological processes,�I feel strongly that there is�a creative human "energy" that must come from/go to somewhere), but if I were in a persistent vegetative state, by all means let me go. I find it ironic that when people like the husband of Terri Schiavo (I may have spelled that wrong) wanted to let her go, he was called a "murderer" by her family and religious types who say it should be up to God to take our lives...how is keeping someone biologically alive, possibly against his/her wishes,�with tens of thousands of dollars of technology, not "playing God"?

you know what I think might be quite interesting?

To cross reference those who would want to be unplugged to those who support women's right to choose.

Of course, in this community, the results would be pretty predictable... but... I mean, in the general public.

The bigger problem is almost everyone wants to be unplugged. There is only one vote for being kept alive so it doesn't correlate with anything.

well, right.

Like I said, in this community it wouldn't make sense.

Like I said, in the general public.

I'm not so sure we differ that much from the general public when it comes to this. There are a number of pro-life people on FHDC, far more than there are people that don't want the plug pulled.

ahh, I see your point.

Yeah, I think we're still more largely pro-choice biased than the general public, though.