I’ve heard about the “Rule of Threes” since my Boy Scout and Air Force survival training. It states that a human being can live three minutes without air, three days without water and three weeks without food.
What, then, is to explain Terri Schiavo’s survival for, at this writing, 11 days without food or water? Could it be that it is her will to live that has resulted in the Rule of Threes being turned upside down?
Admittedly, this rule applies to wilderness survival, but the rules on the lack of air, food and water are as operable in a hospice in Florida as in the back country, it seems to me.
