Posted on 04/12/2005 7:20:07 AM PDT by kcvl
Schiavo's 'Dr. Humane Death' Got 1980 Diagnosis Wrong By Jeff Johnson CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer April 12, 2005
(CNSNews.com) -- A neurologist hired by Michael Schiavo to confirm that his wife Terri was in a persistent vegetative state said he was "105 percent sure" of that diagnosis, but Dr. Ronald Cranford expressed similar certainty about a patient he examined in 1980 who later regained both consciousness and the ability to communicate.
Three days before Terri Schiavo's death, Cranford appeared on the MSNBC talk program, "Scarborough Country," to discuss her condition. Cranford was interviewed by reporter Lisa Daniels.
http://www.gopusa.com/news/2005/april/0412_schiavo_doctor1.shtml
Cranford also certain, but wrong about 1980 diagnosis
Cranford expressed similar certainty about another patient he declared to be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) in 1980, former Minneapolis Police Sgt. David Mack.
''Sergeant Mack will never regain cognitive, sapient functioning,'' Cranford said six months after Mack was shot while serving a search warrant on Dec. 13, 1979. ''He will never be aware of his condition nor resume any degree of meaningful voluntary conscious interaction with his family or friends.''
Based on Cranford's unequivocal diagnosis of Mack, the officer's relatives removed him from a respirator in August 1980 "because his family felt he should be allowed to die rather than exist in such a state," according to published reports.
But Mack did not die.
On Oct. 22, 1981, 18 months after Cranford declared Mack's case hopeless, doctors at the advanced care facility where Mack was being treated noticed that he was awake. The Associated Press described Mack's recovery.
"A policeman considered 'vegetative' after being shot in the head in 1979 has come out of his coma and, although doctors caution he may never recover fully, he is spelling out some of his desires: 'TALK. WALK. SKI. DOG,'" the news report stated, explaining that someone would point to letters displayed in alphabetical order on a board while Mack nodded "yes" or "no" until the correct letter was reached.
Asked how he felt about his recovery, Mack smiled and spelled out "SPEECHLESS!"
"Doctors say Mack has recovered about 95 percent of his intellectual capabilities," the news account continued, "and can understand everything said to him."
I saw that interview, and the doctor was abusive, crude, and resorted to name calling. I wouldn't let this "doctor" shovel my sidewalk...
Thanks for posting this. One just never knows how God will work things out. What strikes me is the doctors tone, the "I am for sure, absolutely, 100%, etc.... that he will never recover. How can he be 100% sure? Doctors do not know everything. I have no problem with him giving his medical OPINION, but that is all it is.
Great find. I'm sure MS was surrounded by this kind of "competence."
The neurologist, who is a member of the board of directors of the Choice in Dying Society, worries how modern medicine offers a great potential for prolonging a dehumanizing existence for the patient.
"…The United States has thousands or tens of thousands of patients in vegetative states; nobody knows for sure exactly how many," Cranford wrote in a 1997 Minneapolis Star Tribune opinion piece titled: When a feeding tube borders on the barbaric. (WorldNetDaily. Com, March 23, 2005). "But before long, this country will have several million patients with Alzheimer’s dementia. The challenges and costs of maintaining vegetative state patients will pale in comparison to the problems presented by Alzheimer’s disease.
"The answer, he suggested, was physician-assisted suicide."
Cranford blames the medical profession for society’s rush toward physician-assisted suicide…"our archaic responses to pain and suffering; our failure to accept death as a reality and an inevitable outcome of life; our inability to be realistic and humane in treating irreversibly ill people. All of this has shaken the public’s confidence in the medical profession."
He blames "right-to-lifers" and "disability groups" for discouraging families from making the choice for euthanasia.
http://www.torontofreepress.com/2005/cover040405.htm
He explained that while landmark legal cases like those of Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan demonstrated it was "sensible to stop treatment in patients lingering in permanent vegetative states," it was now time to look beyond those cases.
"But here in the United States, many caregivers wouldn't consider not placing a feeding tube in the same patients," he wrote. "It's hard to understand why. If we want our loved ones to live and die in dignity, we ought to think twice before suspending them in the last stage of irreversible dementia. At it is, it seems that we're not thinking at all."
Thanks for that info. I am aware of the Death Doctor and his wish to murder alzheimers patients. My grandmother is in a nursing home with alzheimers and it will be over my families dead bodies before we starve her to death.
God will call her home when He is ready, until then, we will take care of her, no matter what that entails.
The issue is not whether Terry Schrivo was in a persistent vegetative state or not....
The issue was as a society should we allow another fellow human starve to death because we determined that their life as it is is less valuable than ours......
Whether Terry Schrivo remained in that state or could have recovered is not germaine...
NeverGore :^)
Ah, yes, I understand now. Starving and being dehydrated to death is just ever so much more "dignified"--right? Anyone see one of the several descriptions of how a person dies by these means? Can anyone honestly say that's a "dignified" way of dying?
These people really disgust me. Kcvl, your posts are a real service, thanks!
Some freepers seem to think so.
...for reading.
In recent years, medical ethics and the law have been twisted in frightening ways. Food and water have been reclassified as "medical treatments" if they’re administered "artificially." Dr. Ronald Cranford has even testified in court that spoon-feeding may be classed as "artificial," presumably because helping people to eat is somehow unnatural.Dr. Cranford has been an instrumental force in redefining the determination of death. Death was once defined as the time when the heart permanently stopped beating. Through Dr. Cranford’s activism, it was changed to coincide with the cessation of brain waves. The motivation for this redefinition was so that human organs would survive the death of the patient and be available for transplant.
Dr. Ronald Cranford was a member of the board of the former Euthanasia Society of America, which eventually merged with Partnership for Caring...Cranford is a member of the board of directors of the Choice in Dying Society, which promotes doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia. He was also a featured speaker at the 1992 national conference of the Hemlock Society.
Now if that don't scare the hell out of you...I don't know what will.
Thanks.
I missed your original post--good comments, and you've touched on something that should scare the dickens out of anyone, that is, except someone who actually prefers death to life--or those who hope to profit in some way from someone's death.
bttt
From Small Beginnings: The Road to Genocide
An excerpt:
Dr. Alexander demonstrated in Medical Science Under Dictatorship that by the early 1940s, the German medical profession had become fully implicated with the Nazi regime and its death camps. Moreover, he outlined how this monstrous outcome originated from small beginnings. It started with acceptance of the progressive and rational idea that some people had a life not worthy to be lived and were a burden to society and to the state. Once this idea was acted upon, and physicians became accustomed to it, the extermination system expanded to include all people considered for any reason to be a financial burden to the state, followed by all those considered to be disloyal or a threat to the government and, ultimately, anyone considered undesirable by the government.
"God will call her home when He is ready, until then, we will take care of her, no matter what that entails".
Beautifully stated. I promised my Mom and Dad the same, even though they are healthy today, and my prayers are that they will always remain so, I'd never let any doctor starve or dehydrate them ever.
Blessing to you and your family.
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