Madam, - I know nothing of medicine, but from my experience as an artist I believe I have learned that human consciousness is our deepest reality.
The Florida Supreme Court has ruled, I understand, that Terri Schiavo is in "a persistent vegetative state", while the same court found that her state "is not simply a coma ... she is not asleep."
Ms Schiavo's feeding tubes were removed last Friday week. Such a terminal decision might be appropriate, I imagine, in circumstances involving the withdrawal of a device designed to maintain artificial life in a brain-dead person, rather than the withdrawal of water and nourishment from a subject who is "not asleep", thus causing her death primarily from thirst.
In such circumstances, how can one be sure that she "will be allowed to die in peace"? None of us, I think, can assuredly judge the nature of her vestigial consciousness.
As for "the right to die with dignity" which you uphold, I entirely concur.
Hopefully, however, my release from life in such conditions would not be due to the withdrawal of hydration and nourishment. - Yours, etc.,
LOUIS LE BROCQUY Carlisle Street, Dublin 8.
Madam, - The Easter Sunday morning's images of the enormous crowd filling St Peter's Square before a silent, suffering Pope gave fitting testimony to one of the central teachings of his papacy: a person's worth lies in what they are, not in what they have.
This makes all the more poignant the plight of another silent, suffering human being: Terri Schiavo. - Yours, etc.,
Fr GAVAN JENNINGS, Cunningham Road, Dalkey, Co Dublin.