Truthfully, if we're talking about the ethics and saving a life in cases like that of Terry Shiavo, we seem to be ideologically screwed up. In terms of ideology lets alternately consider Abortion, where we also have "the debatable right for the human being to live." In the case of Terry Shiavo, we have a woman that is extremely unlikely to ever wake up and it is extremely likely that, were she to have woken up, she'd just be an awake vegtable. In the case of Abortion, we're dealing with the termination of the life a a human being that is pretty well guaranteed to be conscious, coherent, and lead a normal life if allowed to live. So if Abortion is not murder and taking Terry Shiavo off of her feeding tube was murder ... kinda makes humankind contradictory as all hell doesn't it??
Consider that the Republican Party that is outspoken against abortion also generally advocates and defends capital punishment. The Democratic Party, by in large denounces Capital Punishment as "barbaric and cruel" but staunchly defends the right for a woman to terminate the life of her unborn child.
By the way, didn't Scott Peterson get convicted for a double homicide: Having murdered his wife and unborn child. And yet, wasn't that murder committed in a state where abortion is legal? So you have an established law that an unborn child is not considerred to be alive, but a man gets convicted of murder for killing just such an unborn child in that same state.
Bear in mind, I'm not taking sides on any of the issues here, I'm just saying that when it comes to valuing a human life, humankind is currently very self contradictory. Seems we need to make up our mind about a lot of things, when it comes to saving human lives. Now we're just adding one more debate to the whole mess.[/code]