The Right to Live or Right to Die? - IslamOnline.net

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Wed. Mar. 23, 2005

Health & Science > Health > Nutrition

The Right to Live or Right to Die?

By IOL Health & Science Staff

A complicated legal and ethical debate has developed over the past 15 years on whether Terri Schiavo should be kept alive through the only means that is possible for her; a feeding tube that supplies her with the nutrition she needs to sustain the breath of life. But is her situation as simple and straightforward as that? Terri Schiavo has been diagnosed by physicians to be lying in a vegetative state. So what exactly does that mean? Is she alive or dead? Who has the right to decide whether a person in a vegetative state lives or dies? The legal guardian? The physician? The courts? Religion? Do decisions such as these vary according to our different backgrounds, or is there one ethical decision that can be made and generalized for every single case and every single person regardless of religious belief, philosophical affiliation, or cultural upbringing? The debate is ongoing, and what is most obvious is that there is no single universal decision that everyone agrees to.

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