Grand Irony of a Ruined Life

Please Don't Forget the Consumption Controversy
Via Rampant Intellectualism- this piece provides the astonishing background to the Schiavo forced-to-live controversy- and is probably the most noteworthy thing I have seen or heard on the matter.

I've included some text as it will probably go members only soon. Click the title to read the full story, or here.

Please Don't Forget the Consumption Controversy
Adrienne MacIain
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Mark Batalla / Daily Nexus

One thing that appears to have gotten lost in the political fracas surrounding the life and death of Terri Schiavo is the cause of her current non-responsive state. In point of fact, Ms. Schiavo's condition is the result of a potassium imbalance triggered by an eating disorder. To be more specific, Ms. Schiavo was bulimic, meaning that she forced herself to regurgitate whatever nourishment she took in, so as to maintain the slender silhouette so ubiquitous in the mainstream American media and so coveted by the American public. That's right: The thickest slice in this whole ironic roast is that this woman who voluntarily malnourished herself into a vegetative state is now being force-fed in order to maintain it.

To quibble over whether tube-feeding is "natural" or "unnatural" is to miss out on the true tragedy of the situation: that a once-vibrant young woman was willing to sacrifice -- albeit unwittingly -- her health and, ultimately, her very will to the false god of glamour. Starvation is indeed a heinous death. And despite what Hollywood would lead us to believe, it isn't a terribly pretty way of life: that waiflike figure may look sexy on camera, but the symptoms of starvation -- dulling hair that comes out in clumps, sallow skin, brittle teeth and nails, excessive body hair growth, breath like something crawled in there and died and loss of bladder control, just to name a few -- are not the least bit attractive.

And yet, tragically, starvation is precisely what Ms. Schiavo chose for herself in what was to be her final act of free will. Morality aside, force-feeding is quite apparently inconsistent with the choices Ms. Schiavo made for herself while she still had the capacity to make them. Then again, perhaps she forfeited her right to make decisions regarding her own welfare when she vomited her way into irreversible brain damage.