Posted on 06/14/2005 10:16:07 AM PDT by areafiftyone
LARGO - The long-awaited results from Terri Schiavo's autopsy will be released Wednesday morning, Pinellas County officials announced today.
The brain-damaged woman died at her Pinellas Park hospice on March 31, two weeks after the removal of her feeding tube. During the course of the legal battle, allegations surfaced that Michael Schiavo abused Terri. Those complaints had previously been dismissed in court, but the autopsy is expected to settle that question for good.
The autopsy is also expected to reveal what condition Terri was actually in when she died. Her parents insisted that she was minimally conscious, but most medical experts agreed that her apparent responses were involuntary movements.
The autopsy was performed by Dr. Jon Thogmartin, the Pinellas-Pasco medical examiner. He is expected to talk at the 11 a.m. press conference Wednesday.
Thats okay you didn't know. I am disgusted at them myself. This is bizarre. I guess you can add keywords to any post. I guess the coward who did it didn't want to fess up. Well hopefully the Admin Moderator saw my post and will delete them.
Mark Furhman Investigates Terri Schiavo's Death - (many facts still unrevealed about Schiavo) -- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1422235/posts
I had hoped that with all the media scrutiny, that the autopsy couldn't be anything but clean. But the media has a short attention span, and there are so many other stories competing for people's attention...so we will see, I guess.
Thanks!
Will Autopsy Report Make "Outlandish" Claims?
by Fr. Rob Johansen, June 15, 2005
As the previous entry reports, the long-awaited autopsy results for Terri Schiavo will be released later today.
Pinellas County Medical Examiner Jon R. Thogmartin will hold a press conference on the autopsy report at 11:00 AM Wednesday.
What the report will conclude is not yet known, but the Schindler family and many supporters of Terri's right to live hope the autopsy will provide clues regarding the cause of the cardiac arrest which led to her anoxic brain injury in 1990. They also hope that the autopsy will provide evidence of the abuse of which they have accused Michael Schiavo.
I am not terribly optimistic that the autopsy will provide evidence of either the cause of Terri's cardiac arrest or any abuse. I think there was simply too much time between Terri's injury(ies) and her death for any such evidence to still be detectable.
What I am most interested to see is whether or not, as Michael Schiavo and his attorney George Felos hope, the M.E. purports to draw any conclusions regarding whether Terri was in a PVS (Persistent Vegetative State).
As many readers will recall, when George Felos announced that Michael would "permit" an autopsy (the matter was later shown to be completely out of his hands), he said that Michael wanted "definitive proof showing the extent of her brain damage".
Of course, as I pointed out back then, an autopsy cannot possibly "prove" whether Terri was PVS or not. Indeed, Dr. Bernardine Healy, a former Director of the National Institutes of Health and medical columnist for U.S. News & World Report, responded to Felos' announcement, in an appearance on MSNBC, by pointing out that an autopsy can tell us nothing about Terri's neurological function. She lamented the surreal reasoning by which Michael would permit an autopsy when Terri was dead, but refused the medical tests that could assess Terri's brain function while she was still alive.
The inability of an autopsy to retrospectively diagnose PVS did not stop some "talking heads" on cable news shows from offering ill-informed speculation. One pathologist, appearing on Greta Van Sustern's "On The Record" (partial transcript), said that though a determination that Terri was PVS could not be made with 100% certainty, nonetheless an autopsy could confirm the extent of Terri's brain damage - her "loss of neurons" - and whether she was in fact in a PVS.
Neurologists react to statements such as the above with incredulity. Dr. Mack Jones, a Florida neurologist I interviewed for my National Review Online article "Starving For a Fair Diagnosis", characterized such claims as among "the most outlandish statement[s] that I have ever heard". He continued, saying:
Autopsy findings cannot diagnose PVS. I expect evidence of severe brain damage consistent with hypoxic - ischemic injury to the cerebrum with subsequent atrophy. These findings nor any other findings have no bearing on the diagnosis of "minimal consciousness" or PVS.
In a March 31 article at MedPage Today, Dr. Michael De Georgia, head of the neurology/neurosurgery intensive care unit at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, said that the PVS diagnosis "cannot be confirmed by autopsy." Dr. Mouhammed Kabbani, a neurologist at the University of Missouri, concurred with this evaluation, and added that an "autopsy can show the degree of brain damage and how much brain tissue survived the injury", but that "it cannot by any means tell about the patient's clinical status."
In the MedPage Today article, Harvard neuropathologist E. Tessa Hedley Whyte said that "the [pathologic examination of the] brain can't tell if there is a persistent vegetative state or not". But, unfortunately, that won't necessarily prevent excessive claims from being made. Dr. K.J. Oommen, Vice Director of Clinical Neuroscience at the Oklahoma University Medical Center, summed up the problem best, saying that "a pathologist can make such statements, because you cannot disprove them. The patient is already dead!"
While I don't know what the autopsy report will say, I'm going to go out on a limb here: I predict that the autopsy report will, in at least a tentative way, offer a conclusion that Terri was in a PVS. I say this for three reasons: Firstly (and perhaps this is just my cynicism coming out), it would fit the generally unfortunate and dishonest way that the rest of the Terri Schiavo saga has played out. Secondly, doctors with whom I have discussed the Schiavo case share my pessimistic outlook. Dr. Peter Morin, a Boston neurologist interviewed for my March 16 NRO article, said that he anticipated "gross overstatements regarding the implications of the neuropathology." Thirdly, this Philadelphia Inquirer article provides a hint of what is to come:
William A. Pellan, director of forensic investigations for the District Six Medical Examiner's Office in Largo, said the report would address whether Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state.
There would be no point in mentioning the intent to "address" the issue of PVS if the report was not going to draw a conclusion on the matter. Furthermore, the autopsy cannot prove that Terri was not PVS. Thus it seems likely to me that the report will in some way be presented as "confirming" the diagnosis.
Such a conclusion would be in keeping with the way that various "memes" have governed the debate surrounding Terri Schiavo's fate. I discussed some of these memes in my article "The Death of Terri Schiavo", which appeared in the May 2005 issue (available online soon) of Catholic World Report. These memes, such as "9 (or 12 or 16) judges have all reviewed the case and found for Michael", and "all the doctors who examined Terri diagnosed her as PVS", were readily regurgitated by most of the MSM, as part of what Nat Hentoff described as the "disgracefully ignorant" coverage of Terri's case.
If, as I predict, the Medical Examiner's report offers anything approaching a "conclusion" that Terri was PVS, then George Felos, the "right-to-die" advocates, and their accomplices in the media elite will have the final meme, with which they can tie up the Terri Schiavo case in a nice, neat bow.
The Culture of Death will advance a little further, abetted by self-assured and willing acolytes.
http://thrownback.blogspot.com/
*BUMP*
This gives you a good idea of the kind of people the Schindlers are dealing with. I can't understand why anyone with a grain of sense would believe anything George Felos said. He's been quoted as saying, "the Schindlers continue to engage in a "smear campaign against Michael to deflect the real issues in the case, which were Terri's wishes and her medical condition." He hasn't a clue as to what Terri's wishes were. He showed what kind of scum he really is when he came out and lied about how peaceful Terri's death was. Being starved to death is not and could not be peaceful! To lie there for two weeks and be denied even an ice chip is extreme and inhumane treatment. Greer, Felos, Schiavo and his brothers who testified for him should be subjected to the same treatment. If they survived, I wonder if Felos would tell us how peaceful he felt. He and Greer should be disbarred and imprisoned IMO.
Hi, amdgmary -- thanks for posting that. Autopsy -- examination of the brain tissue after death -- cannot indicate how that brain tissue functioned in life.
The guardian & his lawyers & the courts repeatedly refused requests for a functional MRI.
A previous CT / MRI thread contained an interesting commentary from many angles, incl. from one who had sufferered a brain injury that left a CT comparable to Terri's.
link to coverage, 11 eastern, thanks to tut for link info:
LINK TO COVERAGE, thanks tutstar -- http://www.tampabays10.com/
There is an excellent column at www.blogsforterri.com about the pending release of the autopsy results.
There is an excellent column at www.blogsforterri.com about the pending release of the autopsy results.
sorry to read this news story below the autopsy link, and prayers for all our soldiers and their families continue: http://www.tampabays10.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=14898
Local soldier dies saving others in Iraq / Army Specialist Stanley Lapinski
Citrus County, Florida - A Bay Area father is talking about his son who was killed in Iraq this weekend.
Army Specialist Stanley Lapinski died when a roadside bomb exploded next to his convoy Saturday in Baghdad. ...
How beautifully expressed.
FYI!!!!
Thank you. I am going to read it.
My older sister spoke only one word but said everything, in an infinitely sad whisper: "Barbaric!"
If Greer had heard her, it would have pierced his heart. But I don't believe he has ears to hear, nor do I believe he has the conscience to realize the evil he has done, not only to Terri, but to everyone.
No, he doesn't. He himself is the one infatuated with death.
I think we can eliminate nice people, friendly people, courteous people, virtuous people, well-spoken people, moral people and grown-ups.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1423304/posts?q=1&&page=951
(locked due to major backbiting and cuss words).
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