I would like to clarify a comment of mine quoted in Tribune staff reporter Jon Anderson’s “Seminar is a matter life, death–and little agreement” (Metro, Jan. 27). I was quoted as being angry at an obstetrician who said, “He said I’d be a vegetable for the rest of my life.”
I would not want anyone to get the idea that I endorse “vegetable” as a term to apply to any human being. My anger over that word is not so much directed at the doctor who used it against me in the 1950s as against the many physicians who continue to use the word to describe some of their patients.
Countless parents and family members tell stories showing that when a physician uses that word, what inevitably follows is how to best dispose of the person involved. To put it simply, “vegetable” is a killing word.
Fortunately, I escaped that fate; too many do not.
