** How is it Senator Bill Frist (an M.D.) can tell just by looking at a video that Terri Schiavo isn't in a persistive vegetative state? These amazing powers might just revolutionize the way medical care is delivered! No more sitting around in waiting rooms for a lousy few minutes of our doctor's time...just send the doc a video and get an on-the-spot diagnosis without fiddling about with those annoying check-ups and tests and stuff.

** Terri Schiavo's brain-damaged state was caused by a lack of oxygen to her brain after she collapsed in 1990. It is believed that this collapse was the result of bulimia. So isn't it a little late to be concerned about Terri starving to death? It seems to me that happened 15 years ago. It is reported that after she and her husband Michael moved to Florida (after Terri's parents moved there) she had a sudden and dramatic weight loss and was subsequently treated for fertility problems (she had stopped menstruating, a symptom of bulimia). What a shame her parents didn't put up such a fight for her life when they actually had a chance to keep her from starving to death.

** I realize that conventional medical opinion is that Terri Schiavo cannot think or feel and is not aware of her surroundings. Still, I can't shake the feeling that starving to death is a horrible way to die, whether or not she's cognizant of it. Why does she have to waste away so horribly, yet we'll put a convicted murderer to sleep? That just doesn't make sense to me.