This is foxnews.com report on the autopsy results announcement:
Autopsy: Schiavo Was Not Abused
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Associated Press
LARGO, Fla. — Terri Schiavo did not suffer any trauma prior to her 1990 collapse and her brain was about half of normal size when she died, according to results released Wednesday of an autopsy conducted on the severely brain-damaged woman.
Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin concluded that there was no evidence of strangulation or other trauma leading to her collapse. He also said she did not appear to have suffered a heart attack and there was no evidence that she was given harmful drugs or other substances prior to her death.
Autopsy results on the 41-year-old brain damaged woman were made public Wednesday, more than two months after Schiavo's death ended an internationally watched right-to-die battle that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House and divided the country.
She died from dehydration, he said.
He said she would not have been able to eat or drink if she had been given food by mouth as her parents' requested.
"Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not," Thogmartin told reporters.
Thogmartin said that Schiavo's brain was about half of its expected size when she died March 31 in a Pinellas Park hospice, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed.
"The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain. ... This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."
"He said she would not have been able to eat or drink if she had been given food by mouth as her parents' requested.
"Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not," Thogmartin told reporters.
Thogmartin said that Schiavo's brain was about half of its expected size when she died March 31 in a Pinellas Park hospice, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed.
"The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain. ... This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons.""
This is what any expert who was not PAID by the Schindler family had been sayng all along.
And no, I am not gloating. I would have had no problem whatsoever with her parents taking care of her. (For their sake, since she would never have known anyway)
It's the BLANTANT and utterly rampant intellectual dishonesty that has been embraced by the right with regard to this case. It's very DUmmie-esque... such a fervent horse-blinder "if the facts don't agree with me, I'll just scream louder" mentality that really dissapoints me.
I heard over and over that her cerebral cortex had been destroyed and that she had no brain left, only a brain stem.
Apparently, that was wrong. Oops.
The point of this article is to try to assuage the guilt of people who inwardly think it is okay to do away wih people who are vegetables.
"We wouldn't do that to just anybody, only ones with no brain function." Yeah, wait 5 years and tell me what is going on in this nation. We let retarded babies die on hospital back rooms.
What a waste, people think. Well why not eat fetuses, they are a waste, too.... (several earlier threads today had stories on this)....
Dear God, what are we coming to, first dead fetus-eating and now laughing off the cruel starvation of an innocent woman. "It wasn't so bad, she was a vegetable." "It isn't so bad, it's just not really human yet."
Didn't they used to make lampshades from the skin of dead Jews? That's economical, too....
Why didn't they just shoot Terri Schiavo in the head? It would have been even more economical. And that way we would all be sure that you killed a vegetable on purpose...
I have a headache....