I have to run, but here are the links:
The Wolfson report:
http://www.miami.edu/ethics2/schiavo/wolfson%27s%20report.pdf
You can read more court documents at abstractappeals.co
The Euthanasia Connection
But Judge Greer accepted the medical testimony presented by Michael Schiavo that Terri is in a PVS and will not recover. That conclusion becomes even more dubious when you examine Felos’s well-known ties to the euthanasia movement and the background and testimony of Michael Schiavo’s principal medical witness, Dr. Ronald Cranford.
Felos has been a member of the infamous Hemlock Society. Amazon.com, on the Web page for Felos’s book Litigation as Spiritual Practice, describes him as “spearheading a social revolution to enable death with dignity in the state of Florida.” He certainly spearheaded the effort to bring about Estelle Browning’s death, spurred on by his belief that he can spiritually commune with those in a PVS. Although she couldn’t speak, he claimed that he detected her soul crying out to his soul, asking, “Why am I still here?”
In light of Felos’s association with the euthanasia movement, it’s hard to imagine that his choice of Cranford is coincidental, as Cranford is perhaps the leading medical exponent of the pro-death movement.
Cranford jokingly refers to himself as “Dr. Death” and, for a fee, will come to a trial and testify that the person whose life the plaintiff wants to end is in a PVS. He was the leading medical voice calling for the deaths of Paul Brophy, Nancy Jobes, Nancy Cruzan, and Christine Busalucci, all of whom were brain-damaged but not dying. Nonetheless, he advocated death for all by dehydration/starvation, just as he has for Terri.
Nancy Cruzan—one of his “patients”—required no skilled nursing, no care but food and fluids, hygiene, and turning to prevent bedsores. She didn’t even need tube feeding, but Cranford testified that he would even consider spoon-feeding “medical treatment.” Cranford wrote in the summer 1998 issue of Concern for Dying that he foresees “that there may be extreme situations, and in the future increasingly common situations, where physician-assisted suicide may not only be permissible, but encouraged.” In a 1997 op-ed for the Minneapolis–St. Paul Star Tribune, Cranford advocated the starvation of Alzheimer’s patients.
In contrast to the twelve hours Hammesfahr spent examining Terri, Cranford spent approximately 45 minutes. Rus Cooper-Dowda, who has endured neurologic exams himself, upon seeing the videotape of Cranford’s exam described it as “physically brutal.” He said that Cranford “clumsily poked, prodded, thumped, shoved, and pinched her.” Although Cranford admitted that Terri pulled away from him when he approached her, he did not deem that a voluntary response. When Terri moaned after he “thunked her hard between the eyebrows,” Cranford told the court that it wasn’t a response to pain.
Cranford prides himself on the fact that he was very influential in the development of the criteria used in diagnosing PVS. But in 1996, Dr. Keith Andrews, the medical director of the Royal Hospital for Neurodisability in London, along with several other staff members, published an article titled “Misdiagnosis of the Vegetative State” in the British Medical Journal. In that article, they revealed that 43 percent of patients sent to that hospital with the diagnosis of PVS—some of whom had been presumed to be in a PVS for more than a year—were not in a vegetative state at all. They found that the misdiagnosed patients had severe communication problems as a result of their disabilities, but with the proper clinical measures, “nearly all were able to communicate...some to a high level.” They concluded that:
The vegetative state needs considerable skill to diagnose, requiring assessment over a period of time; diagnosis cannot be made, even by the most experienced clinician, from a bedside assessment [emphasis mine].... Recognition of awareness is essential...to avoid inappropriate approaches to the courts for a declaration for withdrawal of tube feeding.
The growing awareness of the difficulty in diagnosing PVS, and the widespread errors in making the diagnosis, have led many leading hospitals, such as the Northwestern University Rehabilitation Institute, to routinely reassess patients referred to them as PVS.
Cranford has testified that patients in a PVS have “no hope of recovery,” but this is simply untrue. A number of people found to be “unrecoverable” have, in fact, recovered. Cranford himself diagnosed Sergeant Richard Mack, a police officer shot in the line of duty, as “definitely...in a persistent vegetative state...never to regain cognitive, sapient functioning.” Almost two years later, Mack “woke up.” He eventually regained almost all his mental abilities.
Kate Adamson, who appeared on Fox News’s O’Reilly Factor on November 6, recounted her own chilling story. She had also been diagnosed as in a PVS, and doctors removed her feeding tube.
I could see and hear everything going on around me, and I had no way...of communicating with anyone…. I was completely paralyzed…. When the feeding tube was turned off for eight days, I was—thought I was—going insane. I was screaming out [in her mind], “Don’t you know I need to eat?” ...Michael [Schiavo] on national TV had mentioned last week that it’s a pretty painless thing to have the feeding tube removed. It is the exact opposite. It was sheer torture...
Thanks to the persistence of her husband, Adamson’s feeding tube was restored, and the doctors reluctantly began to treat her. Her recovery suggests that the untreatability of PVS isn’t as absolute as some would like to suppose.
Hammesfahr is one of the doctors challenging medical orthodoxy regarding PVS patients. He has had promising results in treating stroke and other brain-injured patients. The effectiveness of his treatment program has been confirmed by Medicare, which, by law, is not permitted to pay for treatments that are experimental or not demonstrated to be medically effective. In a 2001 decision, after review of more than 700 patients and the medical literature, Medicare ruled that Hammesfahr’s therapy is “medically reasonable and necessary.”
Hammesfahr believes not only that Terri Schiavo is not in a PVS, but that she is treatable and could recover at least some of her former faculties. He believes, for example, that with proper therapy, Terri could once again swallow normally and take solid food by mouth. He has repeatedly advocated that Terri be given this therapy, but Michael Schiavo, who has complete control over Terri’s medical care, has steadfastly refused to allow it. The evidence for his contention, Hammesfahr explained, is that Terri does not drool. “The average human being produces one-and-a-half to two pints of saliva a day. If you can’t swallow it, you drool,” he said. “Terri can swallow that amount of her own saliva, which means that she can swallow liquids.” If Terri can swallow liquids, he reasons, it is quite likely that she can learn to swallow solid food again, which, of course, means she would no longer require tube feeding.
Michael wanted to “move on” with his life was evident long before Pearse interviewed Michael. In the 1993 guardianship hearing, Michael testified regarding his disposition of some of Terri’s property:
Attorney: What did you do with your wife’s jewelry?
Michael: My wife’s jewelry?
Attorney: Yeah.
Michael: Um, I think I took her engagement ring and her...what do they call it...diamond wedding band and made a ring for myself.
Attorney: What did you do with her cats?
Michael: Her cats were put to sleep on the advice of my mother-in-law.
The veterinarian who euthanized Terri’s pets came forward to say there was never any suggestion from Terri’s mother that this be done, and that it was done only at Michael Schiavo’s insistence.
Pearse also found that Michael’s claim that Terri wouldn’t want to live in her condition wasn’t credible and noted that Michael stood to inherit about $800,000:
[H]is credibility is necessarily adversely affected by the obvious financial benefit to him of being the ward’s sole heir at law in the event of her death while still married to him. Her death also permits him to get on with his own life.
In February 1999, Felos filed a “suggestion of bias” against Pearse and demanded he be removed as guardian ad litem. The judge then hearing the case, Bruce Boyer, took no action on Felos’s “suggestion of bias” or on Pearse’s report. In April of that year, Pearse filed a request that he either be given further instructions or discharged. He reiterated his concerns about Michael’s guardianship and also noted that there would be due process difficulties if the case proceeded to trial without Terri having an independent guardian ad litem. Judge Boyer discharged Pearse without appointing a successor.
The case then proceeded to trial before Judge Greer, who also refused to appoint a new guardian ad litem to represent Terri’s interests in the case.
WHO IS DR. JAY WOLFSON
TERRI SCHIAVO'S SOON TO BE APPOINTED GUARDIAN AD LITEM?
Dr. Jay Wolfson is director of the Florida Health Information Center at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
He is also a lawyer.
The University of South Florida is intimately connected to Hospice and Hospice of the Florida Suncoast (the corporate owner of the hospice where Terri was being dehydrated and starved, and where she is once again interned).
The USF website gives information on continuing professional education to be held November 6th by the University of South Florida's Center for Hospice, Palliative Care and End-of-Life Studies.
The University of South Florida, Dr. Jay Wolfson's employer, has a partnership with, among other hospice organizations, the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast.
By James Harper
St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer
February 4, 1994
TAMPA - A secretary at the University of South Florida who says she was injured during a faculty fracas just before Christmas filed a civil suit Thursday against one of the professors involved.
Jay Wolfson, a USF professor and member of the Hillsborough County Hospital Authority, threatened secretary Yolanda Santos, grabbed her and jumped on her back - all in a struggle over Santos' personal tape recorder, the suit charges.
"This is something one would expect to read about in grade school," said Santos' attorney, Steve Yerrid. "It's ironic in a place of higher learning that the very basics we learn as children were cast aside."
"We're comfortable that Dr. Wolfson did nothing inappropriate that day," said Tracy Sheehan, one of the lawyers representing him.
Santos' story is nothing but "a fabrication" designed to fuel a bitter faculty turf war at USF, she said.
The suit claims that Wolfson's actions amounted to assault and battery, false imprisonment and negligence and asks for $300,000 in punitive damages.
State prosecutors and USF officials are still investigating the Dec. 17 incident, which occurred at a faculty meeting in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the College of Public Health.
Details of the incident have been sketchy.
Department chairman James Studnicki, who along with Santos filed a criminal complaint, has declined to speak with reporters about it. Wolfson and interim public health dean John Skinner, who were both at the meeting, have said there was a lot of yelling that day, but nothing violent.
Santos' lawsuit offers different version of events.
The meeting, which Santos was there to record, began with an argument between Studnicki and Wolfson. When Studnicki tried to adjourn the meeting and asked Santos to leave with him, Wolfson grabbed her by the arm and thrust her back into her chair, the suit says. Santos said she was frightened by Wolfson's yelling and threats.
A few moments later, Studnicki again asked Santos to leave the room and to take her tape recorder with her. When Santos reached for the recorder, Wolfson "jumped on her back and reached over her in an effort to wrestle the records from her possession," the suit says.
"As a result of (Wolfson's) unexpected attack, (Santos) was violently pushed headfirst into the chair upon which the recorder had been resting and as a result sustained personal injuries."
The Provost Office has asked three professors to decide whether faculty rules were broken.
******
Wolfson made comments about the law last week during an interview with a local television station, and the parents took that to indicate his opposition to the governor's actions. Demers said he did not find those comments to be biased, but even if they had been he believes Wolfson could be fair and impartial.
"This law raises the question, perhaps even if you do have a living will, if there is a family member who has a legitimate concern about the application of the will, could that concern translate into ignoring the living will," Wolfson said in an interview with WFTS on Wednesday.
That independent doctor reported there was no hope for her recovery.
Wolfson said that after examining her medical records, spending time with Terri Schiavo and consulting with experts nationwide, he, too, believes she is ina persistent vegetative state.
But even in his report to the courts, Wolfson wrote of the difficulties in reaching that conclusion, noting Terri Schiavo's "presence" when he was around her.
"Her eyes are not shut, she's breathing on her own and she makes noises," he said. "You want so much to say, 'Terri, give me a sign!' It's not a cucumber lying in a bed.
"The two sides were close to a deal when Michael Schiavo backed out, Wolfson said, saying he couldn't agree to anything Wolfson proposed because it came under the auspices of "Terri's Law," which Michael Schiavo was challenging as unconstitutional.
thanks, peach
its a lot of material, and i am digesting it slowly, will not comment further until i am finished and can reflect on the contents.
to all: peach linked to the report of the guardian appointed by the court at the time of the intervention by the Florida legislature. this is the basis in law for the decisions of the court that have led us to this day. there is a lot of material including a link to the report of the hospital that treated her on the day of her stroke.
here is that link again
http://www.miami.edu/ethics2/schiavo/wolfson%27s%20report.pdf
this stuff is the offical record, so to speak, and it is important reading for all who are concerned about this situation