Bobby Scott Quotes

We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma.

The situation around Terri Schiavo was a deeply held conflict over what to do if someone isn't going to return to consciousness or competence. Who will decide? Even there, where we had settled legal rules, we still had disagreement. We're torn about these things.

President Obama says he will not support a healthcare plan where the government gets to decide whether to, quote, 'pull the plug on Grandma.' Apparently, Obama's plan calls for the much quicker pillow option.

A lot of money is spent trying to keep people alive who don't necessarily want to be alive.

The Karen Ann Quinlan case is where the right to life and the right to die got bound together, and I don't think they've ever gotten untangled.

Illness and death are not optional. Patients have a right to determine how they approach them.

Patients who are being kept alive by technology and want to end their lives already have a recognized constitutional right to stop any and all medical interventions, from respirators to antibiotics. They do not need physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.

People make these comments all the time. They talk about this with their loved ones every day. People's feedings - tube feedings - are stopped across this country every day.

Yes, we need euthanasia, for certain cases where people are in comas or too immobile to even press a button.

Most of the debate over the cultures of death and life is about process. The debate focuses on the technology available to determine how we prolong life and how and when we end it.

The proposed Health Care Reform bill will put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.

There was tremendous pressure to take dialysis, and there were lots of tears when I broke the news to the family that I was not going to do it.

I'm trying to knock the medical profession into accepting its responsibilities, and those responsibilities include assisting their patients with death.

Make no mistake: Obamacare is a pro-death 'health' program.

Shortly after her feeding tube is removed, Terri Schiavo receives the Catholic ceremony of last rites. Michael Schiavo stays in a room down the hall. He remains at his wife's side throughout the day, except when her immediate family comes to see Terri.

The growing professional disciplines of medical ethics and bioethics have had a profound impact on researchers, bedside doctors, associations of physicians, and government.

When death is imminent and dying patients find their suffering unbearable, then the physician's role should shift from healing to relieving suffering in accord with the patient's wishes.

If you explain to a patient what can be done and what might be the downsides, let the patient choose; don't have ethicists, priests, or doctors say you may or may not have replacement cells.

Informed consent is required for every invasive medical procedure, from getting your ears pierced to having an abortion.

Congress called a special session to debate the treatment of a woman in a persistent vegetative state on a day that 20,000 children died in the third world.

Finding a balance between hoped for cures and respect for life: That is the challenge.

It is the duty of the doctor to prolong life. It is not his duty to prolong dying.

Before operating on a patient's brain... I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end.

The fact that some people are not as able to communicate concerns about their care must never mean that any less attention is paid to their treatment - or their death.

I think that the important thing to consider here - Hubert Humphrey said that a society is measured by how he treats those in the dawn of life, those in the shadows of life, and those in the twilight of life. And it is true that Terri Schiavo lives among us in the shadows of life, but she is not brain dead. She feels pain.