Madam, - It seems clear from Anthony Redmond's letter of March 30th that he has never assisted at the bedside of someone in the final days of dying after years in a vegetative state. I and my family have had that experience.
My daughter, at the centre of the "right to die" case here in Dublin almost 11 years ago, was such a patient. She was fed through a tube inserted through a hole in her abdominal wall and her bowels were manually emptied every couple of days for 23 years.
She slept, she woke, she stared, she moaned, she grimaced. But she never spoke, never smiled, never recognised me or other members of our family who visited her year after year. Her diagnosis was persistent vegetative state (PVS).
Before the decision to remove Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was made she was examined by several neurologists and found to have the same diagnosis - that of PVS.
Having endured the intervention of medicine for 23 years our family was granted permission by the Supreme Court to have my daughter's feeding tube removed. She died eight days later, on September 20th, 1995, surrounded by her family.
As I said in my article in The Irish Times of February 24th, 1996, Lucy's "eight days of dying were more peaceful than the previous 23 years of so-called living". I can say without any hesitation that there was no pain, no starving, nothing to warrant the emotive language of many "right to life" proponents.
The fear is not, as Anthony Redmond claims, that we are moving towards killing at will; the fear is that, with the sophisticated medical technologies now available, we will be refused the right to die when our bodies have been damaged to the extent that brain function is no greater that vegetative.
I suggest that it is time to listen to the evidence of qualified medical professionals, and to the experience and evidence of those closest to patients in a persistent vegetative state - namely, in the case of my daughter, me, and in the case of Terri Schiavo, her husband. - Yours, etc,
MARGARET CHAMBERLAIN, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.