Posted on 03/23/2005 2:19:08 PM PST by ambrose
Schiavo Videotape Misleading, Experts Say
Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:06 PM GMT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The videotape that runs endlessly on television stations around the world shows an apparently smiling Terri Schiavo being caressed by her mother's loving hand.
She seems to look deeply, even lovingly, into the off-camera eyes of her mother.
Schiavo's parents and their supporters, including doctors in Congress, have used the tape as evidence the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman is at least occasionally aware of her surroundings and might even be revived from her condition.
They are fighting to get her feeding tube reinserted against the wishes of her husband and legal guardian who says Schiavo would not want to be kept alive in that condition.
But many experts agree the tape is a cruelly misleading trick of biology.
"Pictures do lie," said Dr. Lawrence Schneiderman, a physician and bioethicist at the University of California, San Diego.
"Every time they have done a videotaped neurological examination, the courts have reviewed them and said, 'Yes this woman is unconscious.' Those movements of her eyeballs are reflexive and have nothing to do with recognition."
Studies of people whose cerebral cortices are damaged in the way Schiavo's is show that their eyes will respond to stimuli such as movement or a human face, but there is no way for them to be conscious of what they are seeing.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has been part of the fight to prolong Schiavo's life, said on Wednesday a review of Schiavo's medical records by a neurologist for Florida's Adult Protective Services indicated she may have been misdiagnosed and was more likely in a state of minimal consciousness rather than in a persistent vegetative state.
Such a condition, in which a patient slips in and out of consciousness, was sometimes mistaken for a persistent vegetative state, said Dr. Joseph Fins of New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. But Schiavo was not in that state, Fins said.
"I think now it can be argued that with the advent of minimally conscious state (as a diagnosis), that permanent vegetative state as a diagnosis becomes much more certain," Fins said in a telephone interview.
It is almost certain that when someone suffers brain damage from a lack of oxygen, they are permanently vegetative, Fins said. Schiavo's brain was starved of oxygen after her heart stopped 15 years ago and most doctors who have examined her say there is no chance of recovery.
'UNNERVING PHENOMENON'
Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist and bioethicist at the University of Minnesota Medical School, said reflexes can fool nonspecialists.
"To the families and loved ones, and to inexperienced health care professionals, PVS (permanent vegetative state) patients often look fairly 'normal,"' Cranford said in a statement.
"Their eyes are open and moving about during the periods of wakefulness that alternate with periods of sleep; there may be spontaneous movements of the arms and legs, and at times these patients appear to smile, grimace, laugh, utter guttural sounds, groan and moan, and manifest other facial expressions and sounds that appear to reflect cognitive functions and emotions, especially in the eyes of the family."
Dr. Timothy Quill of the Center for Palliative Care and Clinical Ethics at the University of Rochester in New York, said reporting about the case had confused people.
"Distortion by interest groups, media hyperbole, and manipulative use of videotape have characterized this case and demonstrate what can happen when a patient becomes more a precedent-setting symbol than a unique human being," Quill wrote in a commentary published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Anybody who been around patients in a persistent vegetative state knows that it is an unnerving phenomenon because they are alternate between sleep and wakefulness but that have no ability to interact," Quill said in a telephone interview.
"It is difficult for families because it is very difficult to discern that."
Bioethecists are really scary people. Read what novelist Dean Koontz wrote about these people, back in 2001. It's a stunning passage.
"Great universities like Harvard and Yale, like Princeton, once citadels of knowledge where truth might be pursued, had become well-oiled machines of death, instructing medical students that killing should be viewed as a form of healing, that only selected people who meet a series of criteria have a right to exist, that there is no right or wrong, that death is life We are all Darwinians now, are we not? The strong survive longer, the weak die sooner, and since this is the plan of Nature, shouldn’t we help the old green gal in her work? Accept your expensive diploma, toss your mortarboard in the air to celebrate, and then go kill a weakling for Mother Nature.
Somewhere Hitler smiles. They say that he killed the disabled and the sick (not to mention the Jews) for all the wrong reasons, but if in fact there is no wrong or right, no objective truth, then all that really matters is that he did kill them, which by the standards of contemporary ethics, makes him a visionary."
Dean Koontz, “One Door Away From Heaven” December 2001
Exactly. I work with patients like her everyday (in a DD hospital that hold about 100 patients like Terri.) Her brain is seriously damaged and she will likely never improve, just like the experts in this article assert. Nevertheless, she should not be killed, but rather treated humanely and sustained.
We can always count on Reuters to give a balanced account of every issue. After all, they were so objective in their coverage of the Presidential election. Impossible to detect who they wanted to win.
Who
Who speaks for Terri ?
Michael loves another.
Who cares for Terri ?
They won’t let her mother.
Who’s feeding Terri ?
Greer says, no food at all.
Who will save Terri ?
We watch our nation fall.
CG 3/23/2005
Oh, please...and they expect us to take this seriously?
From Fr. Rob Johansen's National Review piece:
In cases where other doctors don't see it, Dr. Cranford seems to have a knack for finding PVS. Cranford also diagnosed Robert Wendland as PVS. He did so in spite of the fact that Wendland could pick up specifically colored pegs or blocks and hand them to a therapy assistant on request. He did so in spite of the fact that Wendland could operate and maneuver an ordinary wheelchair with his left hand and foot, and an electric wheelchair with a joystick, of the kind that many disabled persons (most famously Dr. Stephen Hawking) use. Dr. Cranford dismissed these abilities as meaningless. Fortunately for Wendland, the California supreme court was not persuaded by Cranford's assessment.
Our 'experts' right here on FR have spoken. Their truth is the only possible truth.
"I saw a video where someone asked her to open her eyes and she opened them really wide. It wasn't a reflex."
I have heard that that 4 minute video was edited down from about 40 hours filming, all apparent 'reactions' just coincidental. Anyone eles hear anything about this?
Those in the Kill Terri crowd have been making an extraordinary display of National Socialist ardor, haven't they?
Der Sturmer indeed!
WOW.
Thank you, B Knotts.
The truth is there.
So are some of the people on this board.
"What about the video showing her purposefully following the balloon moving from side to side, moving not just her eyes but her whole head?? It seems like a conscious act to me."
Good point! And the video of her moving her head to get away from what I assume was a cotton swab with something nasty-tasting on it. She was aware of discomfort and trying to get away from it. That is also a conscious act!
Actually it's precisely because we don't know what the truth is that we say let's err on the side of life. If there was a living will, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. Now, maybe there is nothing that can be done given current laws to save Terri, but I sure hope that the current laws can be reviewed, and people now know to get living wills so this need not happen again.
It's from Reuters - they are not to be trusted!!
"At 3PM Eastern he indicated the abuse investigation had developed to the point where they legal could, and would take her into protective custody."
I didn't realize anyone was pursuing this avenue - thank goodness they did! Keep us posted...
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