Posted on 03/23/2005 5:31:11 AM PST by conservativecorner
You have probably heard Michael Schiavo’s attorney George Felos say things such as this about Terri Schiavo’s brain:
"CT scans just don't lie. When you look at that picture, you see a big black hole filled with water where her brain used to be," Felos said. "There is no cognition, no thought process, no awareness."
Now the doctor at CodeBlueBlog has found the CT scan that Felos is referring to, and what the doctor has discovered is both shocking and wonderful: Felos is wrong, the courts have been wrong. Terri’s brain is not damaged as much as we have been led to believe.
Update: The doctor has also looked at Terri's bone scan report, and concludes that "someone either was physically abusing Terri or they dropped/mishandled her severely."
CodeBlueBlog:
The most alarming thing about this image . . . is that there certainly is cortex left. Granted, it is severely thinned, especially for Terri's age, but I would be nonplussed if you told me that this was a 75 year old female who was somewhat senile but fully functional, and I defy a radiologist anywhere to contest that.
I HAVE SEEN MANY WALKING, TALKING, FAIRLY COHERENT PEOPLE WITH WORSE CEREBRAL/CORTICAL ATROPHY. THEREFORE, THIS IS IN NO WAY PRIMA FACIE EVIDENCE THAT TERRI SCHIAVO'S MENTAL ABILITIES OR/OR CAPABILITIES ARE COMPLETELY ERADICATED. I CANNOT BELIEVE SUCH TESTIMONY HAS BEEN GIVEN ON THE BASIS OF THIS SCAN.
The worrisome, no alarming thing, for me, was that I heard a bioethicist and several important figures on the major media describe Terri's brain as MUCH WORSE. One "expert" said that she had a "bag of water" in her head. Several experts described her as a "brain stem preparation"
These statements are wholly inaccurate. This is an atrophied brain, yes, but there is cortex remaining, and where there's cortex (?life) there's hope.
If you starve this woman to death it would be, in my professional and experienced medical opinion, the equivalent of starving to death a 75-85 year old person. I would take that to the witness stand.
Wouldn’t you love to see the CodeBlueBlog doctor get the chance to take the witness stand and explain that Terri doesn’t have a "bag of water" in her brain? Spread the word about what the doctor has discovered -- and if you have an in with the Schindlers or their attorneys, please direct them to the CodeBlueBlog web site, where they can contact the doctor.
I just found Terri's 1991 bone scan and I believe she was I just found Terri's 1991 bone scan and I believe she was I just found Terri's 1991 bone scan and I believe she was abused, physically.
Link to bone scan.
Have you noticed how the antis have started no threads, yet show up on every informational thread like ghouls within a few minutes to disrupt and turn it into a debate?
Shame that you are not familiar with American History....
But the other two witnesses are both close relatives of the husband - and there's no satisfactory explanation for the 7 year delay in remembering those wishes. And Wolfson is consumed in conflicts of interest!
I'm not going to draw any conclusions from that. The pro-life contingent is clearly far more motivated in this matter, for obvious reasons.
You state that you're a physician, then you know that "clinical correlation" is needed with every scan.
You can't examine the patient on the 'net, you might have but I don't think you were consulted and did EEG, PET scan, MRI/MRA or any medical record review that would compare and contrast a "vegetative state".
This is the first salvo into euthanasia for an inconvenient person.
If you're comfortable with lawyers and judges dealing with medical issues of death prior to knowing the actual wishes of the patient to be killed, then that's your opinion.
I don't agree with killing this woman. We can disagree and still Freep along.
Please explain what the rules are for a Nobel Prize Nomination. TIA!
There are only three lawyers on that list that could be considered founding fathers. Of them, I'm not sure what Samuel Adams did. John Adams I have respect for. Thomas Jefferson was a proto-communist, the father of the American left, a francophile, and a supporter of the french revolution. I could live without him.
LAwyers are parasites, the pigs of the barnyard. I don't know how we're going to fix America but it's going to have something to do with severely regulating you people and sticking a cork in your feeding tube hole.
I don't think Jim's an MD. He just likes to shoot his mouth off.
LAwyers are parasites, the pigs of the barnyard. I don't know how we're going to fix America but it's going to have something to do with severely regulating you people and sticking a cork in your feeding tube hole.
I have to admit that this post made me laugh out loud.
Contemptofcourt, however, I can tell IS a lawyer PRECISELY by the way he shoots his mouth off.
I just want to remind you that you can post more than your opinion here. I won't charge you for billable hours while we conserve.
After years of trying different therapies and seeing Terri get progressively worse, Michael finally realized that she would never get any better and finally accepted that she was in a persistent vegetative state. He probably resisted coming to that conclusion for a long time, but finally was forced to look the truth in the face and realize that it was time to honor her stated wishes.
That may not be what actually happened, but I'll bet it was something close to that.
I'll tell you one reason I care: Because these questionable diagnoses have been used in court, and in the media, to justify killing Terri Schiavo.
There is startling new MRI evidence --presented in the New York Times, no conservative pro-life bastion-- that patients diagnosed to be in PVS DO have "something going on in there."
Please see
New York Times Magazine: What if there IS something going on in there?
The doctors in this study were astonished to find activity taking place in the remnants of these patients' severely damaged brains that was
virtually identical to that of a healthy subject. Some clusters that became active were those known to help process spoken language, others to recall memories.The NYT also published, on February 8, 2005, an article titled "New Signs of Awareness Seen In Some Brain-Injured Patients"."...You couldn't tell the difference between these parts of [the PVS patient's] brain and the brain of one of my graduate students," says Hirsch, an expert in brain imaging at Columbia University.
That article has already been archived by the NYT, so the link will take you only to an abstract. However, I can quote from the full article here:
Thousands of brain-damaged people who are treated as if they are almost completely unaware may in fact hear and register what is going on around them but be unable to respond, a new brain-imaging study suggests..."This study gave me goose bumps, because it shows this possibility of this profound isolation, that these people are there, that they've been there all along, even though we've been treating them as if they're not," said Dr. Joseph Fins, chief of the medical ethics division of New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center. -- The New York Times, Feb 8, 2005
Please read those articles before making more assertions re Terri's condition and prognosis. Your opinions may very well be obsolete.
Your specialty is exactly what? Just a question from an interested non-medical person.
Having been both a lawyer and a journalist, I think I get a double whammy of stereotyping! My next career will be something more respected, like used car salesman.
Bullbilge. You know, just because two parties have wildly different stories doesn't mean the truth is somewhere in between. She's never had ANY therapy.
My problem with that theory is that Michael Schiavo started denying therapy to his wife in Feb 1993, and the hearsay claim of a living will didn't occur until 1997, after the retention of a pro-euthanasia lawyer.
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