On Dr. William P. Cheshire Jr, the doctor Jeb Bush dug up to change his story and suddenly declare Terri Schiavo "minimally conscious" versus being in a persistant vegetative state (PVS).
He also has a learned opinion on stem cell cloning that he informs with a Biblical basis and he opines on the inevitability of human cloning and the ethics of it all. Cheshire writes, "The Christian worldview illuminates a moral path more optimistic than the dead end of technological fatalism. Unlike the false claims of inevitability which, in resigning to what is foreseeably inescapable, dismiss free choice and hence ethics, the true inevitability in which lies the Christian hope invites ethics. Living before God entails making moral choices. Knowing God and his forgiveness enables one to choose the good. Trusting that good will overcome evil gives one reason to choose the good. Believing that existence is not just a series of accidents and collisions of necessity, but that life holds purpose, awakens the desire to choose according to God's moral instruction. His instruction encourages people to treat others with compassion and to respect all human beings at all stages of life and development, for they have been made in the image of God...
...In an apparently futile sacrificial act at Calvary, the Messiah conquered futility. Wondrously, through the risen Lord, such futile creatures as human beings have access to infutility. The true moral inevitability may be found not in the repetitive drumbeat that ushers in the rigid march of cold fatalism, nor in the pestering bark of coercive intimidation, but in the symphony of creative redemption of the world by its heavenly Author."
See: Human Cloning and the Ethics of Inevitability
Now that one state and the federal government, legislative and executive, are now relying upon this kind of testimony influenced strongly by religious dogma in large part in ignorance of science and reason, I revisited Section 4, sub paragraph )a of my Health Care Power of Attorney where it says "A. In exercising the authority to make health care decisions on my behalf, the authority of my health care agent is subject to the following special provisions and limitations.
I'm adding a provision that states:
No physician who writes flowery religious based answers to serious questions of medical science, in quasi-scientific-religious "ethics" think tank "journals", shall be allowed to enter medical opinions on my specific case. Please ensure that the doctors looking after my care in my currently incapacitated state are making judgements grounded in sound medical science, and not based upon some personal evangelistic and religious need on the part of the doctor to interfere with the end of my life.
I further forbid any action on the part of evangelistic politicians to interfere with my Health Care Power of Attorney or my Declaration of a Desire for a Natural Death directive. They are not to be in any way impeded by some politicians idea of protecting my "mortal soul".
What has gone on thus far in the Terri Schiavo case is enough to make anyone make sure that every possible legal document available to them should be filled out and properly kept safe to protect an individuals private choice at life, and death.
This will make sure that people who are trying to profit from your strife, especially religious hucksters, long after your brain has departed this world, will not be able to keep you alive like some weird medieval science experiment.
Hallelujah.