Terri Schiavo's autopsy results have come out, and as many expected, they showed that she had suffered irreversible brain damage and was blind, perhaps as a result of the brain damage.
Frist is backpedaling, saying that "I never, never, on the floor of the Senate, made a diagnosis, nor would I ever do that." Bill, when you're a physician, and make a statement which uses your reputation as a physician, then it can only be called a diagnosis. Whether the diagnosis is right or wrong is beside the point.
Read the complete article here.
Frist said: "Looking at the court-appointed tapes, I raised the question 'Is she in a persistent vegetative state or not?' I never made the diagnosis... I did say that certain tests should be performed to determine that before starving her to death. That was not done. The court acted."
"She had devastating brain damage," Frist said, "and with that, the chapter's closed."
When Terri was still alive, Frist had reviewed videotapes of Schiavo. On the Senate floor, he commented that her brother "said that she responds to her parents and to him. That is not somebody in persistent vegetative state. . . . There just seems to be insufficient information to conclude that Terri Schiavo is [in a] persistent vegetative state."
How much evidence do you need, Bill? If the CAT scan showing her brain to be mostly pudding wasn't enough, how much more do you need?
"I question it based on a review of the video footage, which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office here in the Capitol." His speech was later criticized by 31 of his Harvard colleagues, who sent him a letter saying he'd abused his medical degree.
It doesn't get any better, because even after all the evidence is in, the right-wing Christians still refuse to believe that Terri was no longer a conscious, thinking human being.
In an outrageous display of bias, the mainstream media is reporting that the autopsy results favor Michael Schiavo's contention that his wife was "brain dead." They are 100% wrong. First, the results obtained by Pinellas County Medical Examiner Dr. Jon Thogmartin are incomplete and inconclusive, and the case is remaining open. Second, The Empire Journal reports that the ME was relying mainly on records provided by Gary Fox, one of Michael Schiavo's medical malpractice attorneys, and that many of the documents were destroyed or missing. Third, Terri was left to rot in a bed for 15 years with no medical care or any efforts to rehabilitate her.
* First of all, the autopsy results show that Terri died of a lack of oxygen to the brain. The damaged body died sometime last year, but Terri's brain died in 1990. The reason the case is left open is because the physician doesn't know why there was a lack of oxygen, not that there was a question about the functionality of the brain. This is merely lazy thinking.
WASHINGTON --Terri Schiavo died of the effects of a profound and prolonged lack of oxygen to her brain on a day in 1990, but what caused that event isn't known and may never be, the physician who performed her autopsy said Wednesday. A meticulous study of the organs, fluids, bones, cells and medical records of the Florida woman who became a cause celebre over the "right to die" also found that her brain was severely shriveled and weighed about half that of a normal adult's. The damage to it "was irrecoverable, and no amount of treatment or rehabilitation would have reversed" it, said pathologist Jon Thogmartin, who is the chief medical examiner for Florida's sixth judicial district.
- Second, the medical examiner was certainly referring to medical reports from Gary Fox, but he got those from Terri's physician, not out of a garbage dumpster. And the ME isn't relying on those reports alone - he actually looked inside the skull and saw the brain for himself. Anybody who doesn't believe that Terri Schiavo was thoroughly examined, including slicing open the brainpan, is just fooling themselves.
- Third, the accusation that Terri was left to rot in a bed for 15 years is just silly. The hospital took care of her physical needs, including turning her to prevent bedsores, providing nourishment through an IV, and disposing of her waste materials. Her parents and her husband visited frequently, making sure her appearance was kept up, and her room pleasant to be in. Bonnie Rogoff is essentially accusing Terri's parents of neglect, which really undermines her case.
To put the cherry on the sundae, she ends her article by accusing Michael Schiavo of strangling his wife.
I don't understand these people at all. It's as if they're trying to undermine rational thought.
From the Culture of Life website:
"We should remember that it took Terri two long weeks to die of THIRST. We would not do this to a dog. We owed our sister more than this. We owed Terri much than this. In Terri's case, we abdicated our moral responsibility."
If you had a dog that was in pain, and couldn't walk, would you keep that dog alive? What if that dog was blind, couldn't walk, and growled whenever anyone came near? What if that dog was unable to eat? It would then be a cruelty to keep that dog alive. Terri, if there was any conscious thought in her head, wouldn't have wanted to be kept in that state. It would be worse than death.
But it all makes a crazy kind of sense, doesn't it? Frist has been cruel to animals in the past. Being cruel to a human being isn't much of a stretch.
"Frist is an animal lover who said his decision to become a doctor was clinched when he helped heal a friend's dog. But Frist now found himself forced to kill animals during medical research. And his new dilemma was finding enough animals to kill. Soon, he began lying to obtain more animals. He went to the animal shelters around Boston and promised he would care for the cats as pets. Then he killed them during experiments. "It was a heinous and dishonest thing to do," Frist wrote. "I was going a little crazy."
Michael Kranish, Boston Globe Sunday magazine, October 27, 2002
