Posted on 02/26/2005 6:01:12 PM PST by ViLaLuz
Clearwater, FL (LifeNews.com) -- The family of Terri Schiavo is upset by an Associated Press news report that appeared in hundreds of newspapers on Thursday and Friday.
Bob and Mary Schindler say the report makes it appear that eating orders caused Terri's collapse in 1990 when she did not have such problems. They say other evidence shows physical abuse could have been the cause.
Written by reporter Vickie Chachere, the AP news story says the "lost lesson" in the Terri Schiavo controversy is combating eating disorders.
"It is a twist lost on no one close to the case: A woman who is said to have struggled with an eating disorder is now in the middle of a court battle over whether her feeding tube should be removed so that she can starve to death," Chachere writes.
In a statement released Friday, Schindler spokeswoman Pamela Hennessy says "there was never a determination by any court nor the Florida Department of Health that Terri Schiavo ever suffered from any eating disorder, bulimia, anorexia or compulsive behavior that would lead to a heart failure at the age of 26."
Though Michael, Terri's estranged husband, accused Terri's general practitioner of ignoring a supposed eating disorder, Florida's Department of Health cleared him of wrongdoing or negligence in the case.
"Chachere cites not one medical document that would affirm her careless contention that Terri Schiavo was an irresponsible dieter or a compulsive victim of an eating disorder," Hennessy said.
Terri's family wants Chachere to produce any documents corroborating her story's contentions. They also want media outlets to stop ignoring a bone scan conducted in September 1991, about a year and a half after Terri's February 1990 collapse.
The bone scan revealed physical trauma and possible abuse as well as broken bones throughout Terri's body.
"Neither the law enforcement agencies nor the media or press have made any effort to investigate why Terri Schiavo's body was seemingly broken by battery," Hennessy said.
Terri's father Bob responded to the AP story and called it a "slanderous accusation against my daughter with no basis in fact."
"Certain members of the press are leading a personal crusade to kill Terri," he concluded.
Well, if it's any consolation to Terri's folks, I saw it all for the smoke and mirrors it was intended to be.
Does anyone have an address or e-mail for them? Tell them the AP is full of socialist BS 99.99% of the time.
"Terri's family wants Chachere to produce any documents corroborating her story's contentions.'
The AP should have no trouble coming up with some accurate but fake documents.
If I relied only on my local big-town paper, this AP story is all I would know about Terri.
Ya know, I think the press anywhere and everywhere are full of it. My sister was in a wreck a few years back in a small town. The wreck killed a 16 year old girl, but thankfully my sister lived. the wreck was proven to be an accident and no ones fault, but the news said it was my sisters fault. My family was so pissed. My mother called the paper and told them they better correct it or they would sue. They corrected it, but still these things happen even in the local news! SICK!
Dan Rather will be happy to help.
"Does anyone have an email address for them?"
info@ap.org
I've spoken to lots of people who don't even know about what's going on with Terri, or who she is. A few do, and most think she is a comatose vegetable hooked up to every life support system there is.
Eating disorder???? Yeah, withholding of food and water is an eating disorder that HINO and the court are attempting to give to Terri.
Does anyone have the actual article? I've emailed 3 so called reporters just today about their shoddy reporting of Terri's case. We seriously need to jump on each and every media person who prints or speaks these fabrications because the general public knows only the lies they're being told.
A `lost lesson' in right-to-die case
By Vickie Chachere, Associated Press
Published February 25, 2005
TAMPA -- Before she was the severely brain-damaged patient at the center of a legal dispute over whether she should live or die, Terri Schiavo was a young woman who desperately wanted to be thin.
At 26, she was strikingly beautiful with delicate features. But she had spent her childhood and high school years as a chubby and shy girl, standing 5-foot-3 and weighing 200 pounds at her heaviest.
When she finally lost 65 pounds in her late teens, men started to pay attention--including the man who would become her husband, Michael Schiavo, who was tall and handsome.
But keeping the weight off was a struggle for Terri Schiavo, and years later--after her heart stopped briefly, cutting off oxygen to the brain--a malpractice case brought against a doctor on her behalf would reveal she had been trying to survive on liquids and was making herself throw up after meals. The Schiavos' lawyer said her 1990 collapse was caused by a potassium imbalance brought on by an eating disorder.
It is a twist lost on no one close to the case: A woman who is said to have struggled with an eating disorder is now in the middle of a court battle over whether her feeding tube should be removed so that she can starve to death.
Gary Fox, a lawyer who represented Terri and Michael Schiavo in the malpractice case, said the disease is the "lost lesson" in the Schiavo case.
"While there is no cure for bulimia, there were things that could and should have been done for her that would have controlled it," he said recently.
Terri Schiavo, 41, is now locked in what some doctors say is a persistent vegetative state, with no hope of recovery. In one of the nation's longest right-to-die disputes, her husband is fighting with her parents to have the feeding tube removed; a court order preventing its removal expires at 5 p.m. EST Friday.
An attorney for her parents said Thursday that Florida's Department of Children & Families is seeking a 60-day delay in the removal of the feeding tube while it investigates new allegations of abuse and neglect.
An 11-page confidential document detailing why the department wants to intervene was shared with attorneys, said Matt Davis, a lawyer with the firm representing Schiavo's parents. A department spokesman declined to comment.
As for whether Schiavo really was bulimic, that, like almost every element in the case, is in dispute. Her father, Robert Schindler, said he does not believe his daughter had an eating disorder and thinks her husband had something to do with her collapse. Michael Schiavo has denied hurting his wife.
During the malpractice case, at least one of Schiavo's friends testified they knew she was bulimic because after meals out, she always immediately excused herself to go to the bathroom. Her husband also knew she had peculiar eating patterns but did not realize they were dangerous, Fox said.
Medical records from the hospital where Schiavo was treated after her collapse note that "she apparently has been trying to keep her weight down with dieting by herself, drinking liquids most of the time during the day and drinking about 10-15 glasses of iced tea."
Fox said that in the months before her collapse, Schiavo went to the doctor because she had stopped menstruating. It was a silent "cry for help," the lawyer said. But the doctor did not take a complete medical history that might have revealed an eating disorder.
The jury put the damages at $6.8 million but reduced the verdict to about $2 million because it felt Schiavo was partly at fault for her collapse.
Fox said Schiavo was a victim of medical negligence, but also of societal pressures to be thin.
"She didn't want to go back to where she was from," he said. "This was the only way she could do this in her mind and be able to eat as much as she did."
Funny, on Friday, Syracuse, NY ABC channel WIXT authoritatively announced that Terri's situation was caused by "a MASSIVE heart attack." Where do they come up with this?
Did the paper post its correction on the bottom of page 37? That's the usual thing for most of them.
I think it was something like that, at the bottom of the page where no one was going to read it anyways.
John Grogan | Second thoughts on Terri Schiavo | 2/25/05
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1350930/posts
His column begins, "Sometimes even newspaper columnists change their minds.. . . "
WND 2/26: Philly columnist (John Grogan) changes mind on Terri Schiavo
A Philadelphia Inquirer columnist who believes in the "right to die" has changed his mind about the Terri Schiavo case, pointing to "uncomfortable details" about her estranged husband that now lead him to side with the parents of the brain-damaged Florida woman, who are fighting to keep her alive.
John Grogan said in a column published today, "I no longer so blithely believe Schiavo's feeding tubes should be pulled and her life allowed to end. I'm no longer so sure her parents do not deserve a say in their daughter's future. I no longer am totally comfortable assuming her husband, Michael, who now has two children by another woman, is acting unselfishly."
Michael Schiavo has been living with his fiance Jodi Centonze since 1995 and has said he will marry her upon the death of his wife.
Grogan said he hasn't changed his opinion that everyone has a right to "die with dignity," but he believes that in the Schiavo case, the "devil is in the details, uncomfortable details that raise sticky moral dilemmas."
Terri Schiavo suffered severe brain damage in 1990 after collapsing. Michael Schiavo attributes it to a chemical imbalance caused by an eating disorder, but parents Robert and Mary Schindler believe he may have tried to strangle her.
Michael Schiavo contends his wife told him she never would want to be kept alive artificially.
But Grogan points out Terri Schiavo's heart and lungs function on their own, and she requires only a feeding tube that might not be necessary if she were given physical therapy.
The columnist notes Michael Schiavo, as her legal guardian, has forbidden any therapy.
You're welcome! Especially your post of the article is my 2nd link ;o)
Here's hoping that many more people consider Terri Schiavo's situation with an open mind.
Posted this letter to editor re article in St. Pete paper.
Subject: Terri Schiavo Legacy
In observation, it was reported that this was a right to die case. Further from the truth you cannot get, it is a right to life case.
The abuse singled out to be perpetrated on this woman by her "guardian" are products of the INQUISITION.
Sensory deprivation, lack of medical treatment, broken bones, are all the same tactics practiced on our POW's in Vietnam.
Cards, gifts, or letters to be disposed of not given to Terri by order of Michael.
No radio, it is strictly regulated by Michael and he has to implicitly authorize it.
No medical treatment/therapy to be allowed by order of Michael, which is also contrary to Florida Statute and attested to by himself in disallowing treatment of a urinary tract infection.
If you don't believe this is abuse just ask any ex-pow and you can start with John McCain, AZ.
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