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Judge Greer joins death advocates at bioethics confab
WND ^ | 1 May 2006

Posted on 04/30/2006 11:14:25 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher

The probate judge who ordered the dehydration death of brain-injured Terri Schiavo will join Michael Schiavo and other key proponents of her death as a guest speaker at a bioethics conference.

Florida Circuit Court Judge George Greer on Monday will address attendees of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics 10th anniversary symposium, entitled "The legacy of the Terri Schiavo case: Why is it so hard to die in America?"

Greer intends to speak to the need for courts, not legislators, to decide the fate of incapacitated individuals like the 41-year-old Florida woman whose husband obtained Greer's authority to remove her feeding tube and cause her death, over the objections of Terri's parents and siblings.

His remarks will serve as a long-awaited public response to the unprecedented intervention by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the Florida Legislature, Congress and President Bush to forestall his court order pending further investigation into the case.

"There are reasons courts make decisions when there are disputes," Greer told the St. Petersburg Times last month. "That's what courts are for."

Terri Schiavo had no written advance directive.

On Jan. 11, 2000, Greer ruled she was in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS, and wanted to die.

In rendering his opinion, Greer relied on testimony by Michael Schiavo that his wife had indicated such wishes to him during casual conversations prior to her still-unexplained collapse in 1990, which caused her heart to stop and led to severe brain damage.

Schiavo's brother and his wife backed this testimony, but the Schindler family disputed the alleged end-of-life statements, calling them "out of character" for their daughter and sibling, a practicing Catholic her entire life.

Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo's brother, calls Greer's speaking engagement "offensive," and on behalf of the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation Center for Health Care Ethics intends to protest Geer’s presence at 10:30 a.m. Monday outside of the university's Biomedical Research Building.

"Judge Greer's presence at the University of Pennsylvania's bioethics conference is not only outright offensive and inappropriate but it is indicative of his own biases against the disabled, and may well be in violation of Florida's judicial canons as prescribed by the Supreme Court of the State of Florida," Schindler stated in a press release. "Judge Greer is confirming exactly what my family has maintained from the beginning of Terri's case – that he has a disposition against the vulnerable people whose cases he controls."

Bioethics is the practice developed within the medical community to resolve ethical conflicts such as disputes over whether to remove feeding tubes, ventilators and other life-sustaining treatment. Bioethicists believe in placing limits on a patient's liberty to demand medical care. In the wake of earlier high-profile life-and-death disputes such as that over the fate of Karen Ann Quinlan, hospitals across the country formed ethics committees to carry out bioethicist recommendations for removal of treatment deemed futile.

As WorldNetDaily reported earlier this week, the family of Andrea Clark is scrambling to transfer their ill mother from a Houston, Texas, hospital where an ethics committee seeks to terminate her life-sustaining treatment, including a ventilator, despite the fact the 54-year-old is not in a coma, is not brain dead and wants to go on living, according to her family.

Neurologist Ronald Cranford, a prominent bioethicist whose testimony that Terri Schiavo was in PVS largely persuaded Greer to reaffirm his ruling in 2002, is slated to speak at the symposium later in the day Monday. Cranford has publicly stated no PVS patient should be allowed to stay on a feeding tube.

The roster of guest speakers at the bioethics symposium includes another key player in the seven-year court battle over the fate of Terri Schiavo: Jay Wolfson. As a court-appointed guardian ad litem in 2003, the University of South Florida professor sided with Michael Schiavo on the removal of the feeding tube but recommended Terri Schiavo be given swallowing tests to determine whether she could take oral nutrition and hydration.

Mary Labyak – a leader in the hospice industry who sat on the Florida End-of-Life Panel instrumental in amending the state's advance directive law in 1999 to allow removal of feeding tubes from PVS patients, and the administrator of the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast where Terri Schiavo resided for the last five years of her life – will serve on a panel at the symposium which will discuss "personal experiences with death and dying."

The lead speaker of this discussion, scheduled for Sunday, will be Michael Schiavo.

Greer told the St. Petersburg Times he was unaware of Michael Schiavo's participation in the symposium when he signed on to speak and doesn't anticipate seeing him.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Philosophy; US: Florida
KEYWORDS: deathjudge; georgegreer; ms; murderer
Greer is nothing but a filthy POS!!!!!
1 posted on 04/30/2006 11:14:39 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
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To: Aussie Dasher

These names are all familiar. They and their machinations got a full airing in the alternate media during the Schiavo affair. They are thick as thieves and have been conspiring behind the scenes for years to make euthanasia acceptable to the medical community.


2 posted on 04/30/2006 11:33:03 PM PDT by sinanju
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To: Aussie Dasher

Yet ethics are nowhere to be found...


3 posted on 04/30/2006 11:48:55 PM PDT by kenth
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To: Aussie Dasher

I'm surprised that nothing has happened to him yet.


4 posted on 05/01/2006 12:48:48 AM PDT by coydog (Cowardice does not make you safe. It makes you a safe target. - - Dale Amon)
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