The publicity from the Terri Schiavo case has apparently saved its first life. Apparently an ill elderly woman was consigned to dehydration by her grandchildren despite having an advance directive stating that she only wanted no feeding tube if she were in a persistent vegetative state. She wasn’t in such a state and had a treatable heart condition. Yet, a hospice agreed to dehydrate her and she went without food or water for a week. Other relatives intervened and she is apparently safe, for now. But look at how easy some now find it to deprive the cognitively disabled and frail elderly of all food and water.
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…