Word: hot-button
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...most fascinating aspects of the case, however, is its very ordinariness in the realm of end-of-life decision-making law. Schiavo breaks no new ground. It does not go out on a limb in any sense of the word. It simply combines into one complex package three hot-button issues that encourage reliance on emotion and rhetoric rather than on medical facts. The combination has permitted pro-life and disability rights activists to capitalize on visual images and strong religious beliefs to promote a broad social cause, to the detriment of Schiavo and her family...
...first hot-button issue this case raises is that of artificial nutrition and hydration. Lest you believe the rhetoric about food and water being at issue, let’s be clear: the procedure at issue involves the infusion of a liquefied mixture of nutrients into Schiavo’s stomach through a tube inserted in her stomach wall. Even calling that tube a “feeding tube” gives the incorrect impression that somehow Schiavo, who has no awareness, has the capacity to enjoy food just as you and I do. Nothing could be further from...
...second hot-button issue this case presents is the issue of patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Patients in PVSs, sadly, do not appear to be unaware, even though they are. A CT scan of Schiavo’s brain (available at http://www.miami.edu/ethics/schiavo/CT%20scan.png) reveals that the majority of her brain is liquefied. But, sadly, to a hopeful parent, movements and sounds can indicate some sort of response rather than reflex. Cases involving PVSs—and there are many—often are difficult for precisely that reason...
...FACULTY APPROVED A VOTE of no confidence in President Larry Summers last week, following his controversial remarks about why women are underrepresented in the fields of math and science. But that is hardly the only controversy roiling the Ivy League these days. Here are some of the other hot-button issues raising temperatures on campus. --By Jeremy Caplan
While Summers is ultimately responsible for his actions, the hot-button incidents that have made headlines throughout his career have conveniently played right into the powerful, evolving myth of his disagreeable personality, according to Traub. The fact that he improved his behavior at the Treasury, in other words, went largely unnoticed because the incidents at Harvard so perfectly fit the reputation he had established earlier in the 1990s...