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."
It proves that what is on the videotape is alive rather than a "vegetable". Like I said.
Are we going to go through every joke of this sort? ;-)
This is Cranford's objective:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1368567/posts
Cranford is a member of the board of directors of the Choice in Dying Society, which promotes doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia.
In 1997, Cranford wrote an opinion piece in the Minneapolis Star Tribune titled: "When a feeding tube borders on barbaric."
CAll ASAP! TIME IS AN ISSUE!!! THey are logging calls.
Contact info for DCF
Lucy D. Hadi, Secretary 1317 Winewood Blvd.
Building 1, Room 202
Tallahassee, Florida
32399-0700
Phone: (850) 487-1111
*****Thanks for posting this info and number...I just called...they were very friendly.*****
I think it's safe to say the conservatives on the side of allowing Terri food and water are social conservatives. On FR, they seem to be the majority. I honestly don't know how the final outcome of this case will affect how social conservatives will vote. Guess it'll depend on how they rate the sincerity of the Republicans' reactions.
Have the courts really followed the LAW? (BTW, NO ONE has yet to explain what LAW the courts are upholding!)
All you people that bitch, moan, and worry about your PRIVACY rights because of the PA pales in comparison to the friggin' courts ordering death by starvation of an innocent person just because of the HEARSAY testimony of a money grubbing PRICK...
The COD has truly arrived...
Hells Bells, there's been revolutions for things much more insignificant than this. We've gotten way to comfortable in our greed and selfishness, let's just continue to sit on our fat asses and do nothing!
Bye, Bye America!
How do you know we DON'T know the truth? Are we going to know it when we hear it? Who gets to determine what the truth is? The judge thinks after presiding over this case and having all the evidence presented that he has the truth. Do you see where I'm going with this?
Thanks for posting that picture.
Are you prepared to tell thousands, probably tens of thousands of people who have made the decision to withdraw nourishment for themselves or relatives that their actions weren't good or honorable?
"This from the same wing of the MSM that tried ( and failed ) to convince us a few months ago that the Howard Dean "scream" never happened"
Uh really!! I seem to remember ALL media outlets playing the scream over and over and over ad nauseum
If I was on the fence about who was right, this doctor would have knocked me over to Terri's side.
All four of these physicians agree, yet other physicians and health care professionals have expressed less certainty - even contradicted the “experts”.
"Pictures do lie," said Dr. Lawrence Schneiderman, a physician and bioethicist at the University of California, San Diego
Michael Schiavo has allowed no pictures to be taken for 4 years. So which pictures are lying, and to whom? And how is it that all the information provided by the attending nurses has been left out of your post?
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.
So what? The issue of her PVS is still very much up in the air.
Whether or not Terry Schiavo is actually in a persistent vegetative state has by no means been decided.
"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.
Oh, really? Anyone??? All the reports I’m reading indicate considerable responses.
"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.
How utterly patronizing and patrician.
Long story short, here, a one-sided series of “expert” quotes does not do anything to enlighten the issue.
I can’t help but suspect that people who are so willing to ignore even the possibility that Terry’s parents see their daughter and not some vegetable indicates a sad lack of knowledge about UNCONDITIONAL LOVE - and God’s mercy and grace. May he have such on those of you so willing to deprive her of her life.
What's the harm in keeping her alive? If they say that she won't suffer during the starvation, then she isn't suffering with the feeding tube. Before they put criminals to death, first, they must be found guilty beyond reasonable doubt, then go through endless appeals. Why is that? Because there is the possibility that there was a mistake in the legal process. Now with Terri, it's double-edged. Not only is her life in the hands of medical "experts", but legal "experts" as well. That only compounds the possibility that somewhere, there was a mistake.
"Sounds like about a dozen people on this thread."
Sounds like MOST people on all the Terri threads, on both sides of the issue. I for one would like to see CAT/MRI scan to see if there really is any brain function.
There's no proof that Terri did that. Only the word of a philanderer who stands to gain from her death and his brother. Will those thousands of people write their wishes down?
If they act like Michael Schiavo, unquestionably.
No, he's got Dutch Elm disease.
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