Teresa Schiavo’s case is a current major news story. Teresa fell at her home causing internal bleeding in her head almost twenty years ago. She was not properly treated, which was partly the reason why she is in a vegetative state today. She has only one third of her brain still functioning and depends on a feeding tube for nourishment. Her husband wants to remove the feeding tube, which means that she will die. Her parents want to keep the feeding tube in. This lawsuit saga has been going for years. The husband is now winning and Teresa is dying. This is a serious and sensitive ethical issue, so it has become big news.

Several of Teresa’s videos have been repeated on TV many times, on which it appears that Teresa is very much alive. She looked happy when she saw her mother. She even seemed to be able to smile. But from the medical point of view, she has zero chance to recover because two thirds of her brain was dead. For Teresa’s husband, her death is a kind of relief.

As a former medical professional and an outsider, I stand by Teresa’s husband. I think they should let her go, although I think that starving her to death is kind of cruel. I support Euthanasia. At certain circumstances, death is liberation for a person and many others who have to take care of that person.

When I was an intern at China Medical University, I saw a twenty-four year old female patient with Lupus. Her immune system had attacked her main abdominal artery, a rare symptom for Lupus. The scar tissues blocked the blood supply to her small intestines, meaning that her intestines were dying. Nothing could be more painful than dying organs or tissues caused by lack of blood supply. Heart attack is one of examples. Because of a lack of blood supply to heart, it is usually very painful. We could do nothing for that patient. She could not go through surgery because the surgical wound would not heal. Medicines could not remove the scar tissue and prevent the scar from growing.

Lupus is a human immune system disorder. On one hand, its symptoms appear to result from a hyper function of immune system which attacking host tissues. Normally the immune system should tolerate host tissues. On the other hand the symptoms appear to result from hypo function: the immune system becomes weak to foreign invaders, such as bacteria or viruses.

I remembered that patient’s condition deteriorating fast. She screamed days and nights, even the strongest painkillers could not help her much. Her older sister stayed with her. I had never seen her parents. They might not able to handle the situation. She stayed in our department only several days before we had to ask her sister take her home because there was not much we could do for her, except gave her painkillers, and she also affected the other patients. At that moment, I really believed that at least helping her to die peacefully and painlessly was one of our stupid doctor’s duties.

For Teresa, the situation may not be as dramatic as the patient I mentioned above, but time is another kind of torture. Twenty years is a long time. We do not have many twenty years in our lives. Taking care of paralyzed or vegetable patients is a subject many doctors have studied. It is very complex and costly. It is nothing like what people have seen on TV: Teresa is happy and only needs some food.

I can understand Teresa’s parents. Nobody can let his or her love ones starve to death and do nothing. When I was in CMU, I saw a doctor artificially keep his sister alive for more than thirty days. He finally let her go because everybody could smell the stink of a dead body.

Euthanasia is a sensitive topic all over the world. It is hard for the public to understand terminal diseases and the struggle between to die or not to die. I suggest that only medical and legal professionals can vote for Euthanasia.