Here is yet another news story that confuses Terri Schiavo’s dehydration and starvation with the experiences of terminally ill people. I discussed this the other day in connection with an L.A. Times story that made the same error.

What amazes me is that the story even quotes a doctor who understands the distinction:

[Dr. David] Stevens says the quiet death that physicians often associate with dehydration comes to patients whose bodies were already shutting down from cancer or another terminal illness.

“That’s a whole different thing than someone like this [Terri Schiavo], whose body is in metabolic equilibrium,” he said.

But the article then proceeds to completely ignore what the doctor just got through saying — instead discussing the Schiavo case as if we were talking about a terminally ill patient:

But in a statement, groups representing hospices said the Schiavo case has raised “erroneous medical claims” that stopping food and water causes terminal patients considerable discomfort.

“Most studies show that patients nearing the end of their lives do not experience hunger,” said Ryan Walker, a spokesman for the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association. “Dry mouth is the most common symptom, but it easily can be alleviated.”

Arrgh. The doctor just said Ms. Schiavo is different because she is not otherwise “terminally ill.” The story ends with this similarly inapplicable description of a study of terminally ill patients’ response to starvation and dehydration:

In a recent New England Journal of Medicine study, hospice nurses rated the deaths of terminally ill people who voluntarily stopped eating and drinking. On a scale of zero to nine, with the highest number being “a very good death,” their average rating was eight.

Great to know, AP! But it has nothing to do with Terri Schiavo. So: save it for another story at another time. Or put it in context — tell your readers that, just because some say Terri Schiavo might be suffering, that doesn’t mean that your grandma with cancer will feel the same thing; probably, she won’t.

But quit spreading the canard that Schiavo is having a pleasant death. Since she is not otherwise terminal, the studies that say starvation can be pleasant don’t apply to her. The best we can hope for is that her brain is so far gone that she is feeling nothing. Tragically, I doubt that. Even guardian ad litem Wolfson says that people in a PVS state respond to deep pain stimuli. We just don’t know whether she has experienced pangs of thirst or hunger.

If she is feeling anything, it isn’t euphoria. It’s torture.