Can you please climb down from your high horse? I think I am as well informed as you are, if not better, on this matter. First of all your reading of the opinion polls is incorrect. Just have a look at “L’Osservatorio di Renato Mannheimer Il sì e il no al 47% Italia divisa in due” published in last Sunday’s Corriere Della Sera and get yourself updated. There you can read that public opinion was equally divided. Berlusconi is not worried by Veltroni’s divided and disarrayed PD (Partito Democratico. He is more concerned about losing the vote of the Conservative right – read Casini and Buttiglione- and this is why he chose to appease the fundamentalist Catholic vote.

Your defence of his crass and callous comment about comatose women giving birth when he was defending his position on the Eluana tragedy is pathetic and distasteful.

I did, in fact, forget to mention one detail myself, in my last post – and this is that one is not obliged to use extraordinary measures to keep someone alive (even though the person is evidently dying). The first case you mention falls under this set of circumstances, and I would agree completely with the withdrawal of such persons from a ventilator (as I have already said that I agree with the outcome in the Welby case). Withdrawing hydration/ nutrition is not the same thing. Hydration and nutrition are not extraordinary means of treatment, and just the basics of nursing care. What we doctors refer to as TLC is basically keeping the patient comfortable and hydrated, even though treatment is not being given, whereby death will eventually come. Extreme dehydration in itself can cause discomfort, so I see no virtue in bringing it about.

Too much information!

You are not well-informed. If this case were to influence voters, Berlusconi knows that he stands to lose more than he gains since most polls show that the majority of Italians are in favour of letting Eluana die. Anti-Berlusconi Catholics approve his efforts to save her but would not, for this reason, vote for him so your summary judgement of Berlusconi’s intentions is clearly incorrect.

You are also incorrect in considering resistance to euthanasia as exclusive to Catholics; there is not one christian denomination which does not oppose the principle, as do many non-religious movements.

“I really hope those women were already pregnant when they fell into a coma.”

Usually they were but unfortunately there have been at least three cases of women, raped while in coma, who conceived and gave birth.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-54724747.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9805E1D91239F931A35757C0A960958260

http://www.bookrags.com/highbeam/baby-for-coma-mum-raped-in-nursing-20010408-hb/

Antoine Vella –
Berlusconi’s act was just a pandering ploy to the win the Catholic vote. This is a divorced man who preaches the sanctity of marriage just to ingratiate himself with the Roman Catholic Church and poach the millions of Italian voters who are still conditioned by the preaching of the Vatican. His comment that comatose persons can still give birth was crass and callous to say the least.

http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20090203-you-like-that-huh-relish-advertising-campaign-milan-sexual-abuse

I really hope those women were already pregnant when they fell into a coma.

It would be shameful if the Udine clinic had really agreed to let Englaro die just to spite Berlusconi. By the same token, if he had been in favour of euthanasia they would have forced her to live at all costs. It would be clearly malicious for a hospital to undertake a procedure of any kind solely to spite a political opponent and no doctor worthy of the name would harm a patient to make a political statement. If this really was the case, it would be an example of the single-minded hostility that the Italian government has to face from its official and unofficial opposition.

As far as I know, none of the persons who have come out of a coma have ever spoken of having been in agony or extreme discomfort though I stand to be corrected on this. I suspect that the agony is actually a projection of what the relatives themselves feel and when we speak of euthanasia being a humane and kind solution, we mean that it is kind to the relatives (in the case of patients in coma). At any rate, the method of euthanasia being proposed in the case under discussion is anything but humane as the patient will slowly die of thirst. At that point, if they decide she should die it would be quicker and kinder (and more intellectually honest) to kill her with an injection, like vets do with sick pets.

Finally, Berlusconi claiming that a comatose person can give birth is an obvious reference to the various cases – admittedly few but notable – where women in coma gave birth to healthy babies. Such occurrences are invariably welcomed as wondrous events and proof that a person in coma is not a corpse but a live and functioning human being capable of, for example, sustaining the long and complex physiological process that pregnancy is.