Celebrated forensic pathologist says 1990 injuries should be investigated
Posted: October 26, 2003
By Sarah Foster
A world-renowned forensic pathologist with over 40 years experience as a medical examiner is challenging the official version of early events in the Terri-Schindler Schiavo case....Interviewed on the Fox News Channel, Dr. Michael Baden, co-director of the Investigative Unit of New York State Police in Albany and former chief medical examiner for New York City, ruled out potassium imbalance and a heart attack as factors in Terri's mysterious collapse 13 years ago – which left her severely incapacitated and unable to speak – and pointed to head trauma and bone injuries as a more likely cause.
Baden explained to host Greta van Susteren it was unlikely for a woman of Terri's age at the time to have a potassium imbalance, unless she had certain types of diseases, which she didn't have.
"Too little potassium can cause the heart to stop beating properly and lead to lack of blood flow to the brain and death of brain cells by lack of oxygen, but that's very unusual, Greta, extremely unusual," he said.
That Terri's heart was healthy would rule out the likelihood of cardiac arrest, he said.
"The reason she's in the state she's in is because there was a period of time, maybe five minutes or eight minutes, when not enough oxygen was going to her brain," said Baden. "That can happen because the heart stops for 5 or 8 minutes, but she had a healthy heart, from what we can see Baden said he studied a bone scan made in March 1991 at a rehabilitation facility that describes her as having a head injury: "That's why she's there, that's why she's getting a bone scan."
"A head injury can cause, can lead to the vegetative state that Ms. Schiavo is in now," he continued, adding the scan showed evidence of other injuries, bone fractures.....
Many people deny she is in a vegetative state.