We Believe What We Want To Believe

As reported on the BBC website, the scientific evidence is:

The report also said her brain was only half its normal size at her death.

She was incapable of surviving without her feeding tube, Mr Throgmartin said, adding that she was blind and incapable of thinking, feeling or interacting with her environment.

"This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons," he said.

On the other hand, elsewhere it is reported:

Nevertheless, attorney David Gibbs III said Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, continue to believe she was not in a vegetative state and questioned the conclusion that she was blind.

The finding that she was blind counters a widely seen videotape released by her parents of Terri Schiavo in her hospice bed. The video showed Schiavo appearing to turn toward her mother's voice and smile. She moaned and laughed. Her head moved up and down and she seemed to follow the progress of a brightly colored Mickey Mouse balloon.

The parents said the video that showed she was aware of her surroundings, but doctors said her reactions were automatic responses and not evidence of consciousness.

What this case illustrates, and reinforces, is a persistent human trait, or limitation, namely that it is not so much what we see that matters - as ilustrated in two ways here - but rather what we believed.

First the scientists and doctors see a brain shrunk in half and severely damaged.

On the other hand the parents see a face, eyes, and its apparent conscious and volitional responses to stimuli of familiar voices.

These observations in and of themselves dont say a thing. What they mean really depends on how we interprete them, which in turn is derived from our perspective, which itself is mostly shaped by our beliefs.

If we believe that brain tissues cannot grow back itself, and that only a normal sized brain can function normally, then we conclude that Schiavo is good as a non-person, ie a vegetable.

But if you believe we have not known all there is in life, and that there are mysteries of life beyond our meagre knowledge in medical science, then anything is yet possible for Schiavo.

But in real life sometimes we have to take decisions, practical decisions, and requires that such irreconciliable positions be resolved. We then need some means, just or otherwise, to do so.

And one means is to base on what we know, albeit our knowledge being incomplete, imperfect and even wrong. For we do not know what we do not know. And as long as you admit to the possibility of anything unknown, then any sort of theories no matter how incredulous, as long as it cannot be disproved, have to be acknowledged, and that does not help the situation.

It is the same with human justice. It is not true justice. What is being exercised and enforced is the law, namely rules, eg of the jury and of the presumption that one is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Michael Jackson may well have committed all those acts for which he is accused. But as far as the evidence goes, the jury cannot say that there is no reasonable doubt, and therefore, as defined by the law, he is innocent. And that's mere human justice for you.

And that is life.

But there is yet true justice.