Posted on 03/11/2007 7:40:49 PM PDT by EternalVigilance
TAMPA -- He's campaigning hard for support from Republican social conservatives, but presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Saturday he disagreed with the government's intervention in the Terri Schiavo case.
"I think it's probably best to leave these kinds of matters in the hands of the courts," Romney said in a television interview airing today.
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
"As I recall, psycho two-timing hubby denied her rehabilitation treatment. Repeatedly. He used up her money elsewhere. He insisted she not be fed by mouth even though she could swallow, because she might 'aspirate' and harm herself. Then he insisted the feeding tube be removed so she could die and he could be rid of her. Sounds kinda psycho to me! I also recall some suspicious fractures showing up on the original Xrays when she first went into this state. Hmm... but that was never really looked into. And you wouldn't want her by chance to regain any communication skills if you were responsible for putting her in that state. She was also contemplating divorce before this happened. It happened after they fought about her spending what $75 at the beauty salon or something. "
~ Terriergal ~
Roger all of that; this case was the finessing of an attempted murder in which Judge Greer and Barrister Mengele were coconspirators.
A nod to post 88, the first statement of the obvious Job One of government:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men--"
Courts are not infallible, viz. Dred Scott. The actions of the Third Reich's gestapo in enforcing its eugenics laws were no doubt unimpeachable with no higher power than the Chancelry in Berlin.
Terri Schiavo had life, which the execrable Michael Schiavo devoted a decade to remove, succeeding at long last for reasons of human evil and weakness.
All men are weak and must continually place themselves in the furnace of righteousness to burn off their impurities.
For Romney perhaps the answer is simply to know what he's talking about.
The courts?
The Supreme Court now features justices who find more value in the rules posted in Amsterdam bath houses than the Ten Commandments.
The Court must include more of the Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas and less of the Bader-Meinhoff gang.
Thank you for your hard work on your post. It is greatly appreciated.
Well, actually you have the testimony of family and friends that she expressed just the opposite views. But if you'd like to limit yourself to her estranged husband's word, you have his sworn testimony that she needed that large settlement to pay for her care for the rest of her natural life, and he needed a large settlement to pay for his nursing license so he could keep the promise he made to her, to care for her for the rest of her natural life. But you don't have to rely on his word alone. You could consider the testimony of those who weren't caught lying. Or you could simply rely on common sense. Does it make sense that she would want to be tortured to death?
In fact, Dr. Nelson, the brain specialist assisting Dr. Thogmartin in the autopsy, was asked if his findings ruled out Terri interacting with her family as seen in several videos. "No," he replied.
Can you please link to where that statement came from? When I search, I only find things like this: "Though the diagnosis for a persistent vegetative state normally is made in living persons, Nelson said he found nothing inconsistent with such a state when examining Terri Schiavo's brain."
The EMTs that arrived on scene were far more interested in trying to save Terri's life than they were in either preventing bodily trauma or preserving evidence of such. Pinning a person to the ground in such a fashion as to prevent her from breathing will not necessarily cause injuries any worse than would be caused by a vigorous application of CPR.
I'm curious, though: how often will a patient suffer from arrhythmia at Terri's age sufficient to cause cardiac arrest, survive, and then live twelve more years without any further cardiac symptoms or treatment? If a person were engaged in unusually strenous activity when the arrhythmia struck, that might be considered a "trigger", but what could Terri have been doing silently in the middle of the hall (Michael wasn't awakened until Terri 'fell', remember)?
That is what the M.E. said in his report, too. She had no heart problem and bulimia was ruled out also. We only seem to have Michael as the cause.
It was not an end-of-life case, btw. Terri was not dying. She was not even ill. Her heart was healthy and strong. She had never had a heart attack. The coroner said she would have lived ten years or more if she hadn't been dehydrated and starved to death.
Actually, when there is that amount of brain damage, it is considered and end-of-life issue. Many people would not want to live in that state and it is generally accepted that, if a person would not want to live in that state, and they communicate beforehand on that issue, it is their right to have care withdrawn.
The problem is that it was unclear what Terri Schiavo's desires were. However, the husband claimed she would've wanted care withdrawn. It is the spouse who has the final say, unless there is sufficient reason to take that say away from him.
It is possible that the dehydration, just as it caused shrinkage to her brain, contributed to the ultimate findings of her visual impairment.
No, it isn't. Just as an ordinary observer can look at someone who died yesterday and see the difference between an old, healed scar on the arm and a recent wound, so a pathologist can tell the difference between cells that died within the last 10 days, and those that died a long time ago. You won't find a pathologist to support your theory because they all know better.
The article you post talks about a child with a reversible injury, meaning the cells were not dead, merely not functioning temporarily. The pathologist found that the vision centers were dead. Dead cells will not be reversed with hydration. It is like the difference between someone with temporary arm paralysis from a blow that injures but does not kill the nerve, and someone whose arm has died from gangrene.
I do not have much respect for Dr. Hammesfahr. Anyone who gets a friend to write a letter to the Nobel committee so he can misrepresent himself as "nominated for a Nobel prize" is someone more interested in self-puffery than science. Hammesfahr claimed to be able to cure all sorts of things, then could not produce patients to back up his claims.
I can respect arguments that any person, with no function or even if brain dead, should be kept alive no matter what. I may not always agree, but I can respect it. I can't respect people who are trying to argue away the medical facts to suit their case.
Nobody really knows how much brain batter is required to function. Scientists have some pretty good ideas, but there are some people who are able to walk and talk despite having suffered sufficient brain damage that a crude structural examination of their brain (CT scan, etc.) would suggest that they were completely incapacitated if not dead.
Had Michael or the court been interested in evaluating Terri's condition fairly, they could have suggested a reasonable testing protocol. Even if Michael would not have been inclined to do so, a fair judge should have sought to work one out. The parents claim that Terri was able to react physically in non-reflexive fashion to neurological stimuli. This would suggest that it would be possible for one parent to provide a neurological stimulus to Terri (whether visual, aural, or whatever) that the other parent could not perceive, and then for the other parent to watch or listen to Terri to determine what the first parent was communicating.
Setting up a protocol similar to the ones used for testing ESP would have been fairly straightforward. Such protocols are designed to be immune from both examiner bias and subject bias. The examiner is allowed to control only variables which should not impair the abilities of a legitimate subject (e.g. selecting the sequence in which certain messages should be sent) while the subject is allowed to control almost everything else. The scoring of such a test is unambiguous; there is no way for the examiner to sandbag a legitimate subject, nor any way for a subject without real abilities to fake them. No amount of wishful thinking will allow a test subject that can't actually communicate to demonstrate such ability.
Why wasn't such a protocol conducted? It would have yielded far more certain results than simply having doctors "vote" on a diagnosis.
Does the brain shrink when you dehydrate someone to death over a two week period?
I agree. Mitt should have STFU.
I for one would just wish the Republican candidates start talking about reducing the size and power of the federal government and taking on SS, Medicaid, and Medicare.
One of the factors, I think, is that very few cases have so much wrong with them as this one. Prior to this case, I would not have expected any man to be so brazen as to betroth himself to another woman and yet still claim ownership of his wife, nor to do many of the other things that Michael did. Many existing laws were openly flouted, so it's not really clear what passing new ones would accomplish.
Wrong. The autopsy report said there were no anatomical heart defects and that she had not had a heart attack. That does not preclude an arrhythmia. Read the autopsy - it doesn't "rule out" bulimia, but says there isn't sufficient evidence for it. The report also found no evidence for abuse, by the way. They also pointed out that the amount of fluid she'd had for resuscitation could make some of the toxicology tests unreliable.
This is not nice to wish this on other even if you disagree, it is just wrong!
Michael Schival is pure evil and evil has NO shame!
I am confuesed you can't have it both ways, its wrong either ways!
Two wrongs don't make a right!
And what reason do you have for believing the husband didn't make the whole thing up? Had his first attempts to kill his wife succeeded, he would have inherited thousands of dollars from her trust fund. Many people would be willing to perjure themselves for that sort of money; it certainly is reason to regard Michael's statements with suspicion.
If I walk into your bank, and tell them that you said I could have $5 from your account, should they believe me? Or should they demand something in writing? If a bank isn't willing to accept a person's unsubstantiated word over a matter of $5, why should a court be willing to accept it in a matter not only of life and death, but also of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the speaker?
Further, even if Michael happened to be telling the truth, I've read nothing in his testimony to even remotely suggest that Terri made any statements to him with the knowledge and intention that such statements could result in her being fatally dehydrated. Absent such knowledge and intention, how can Terri's statements be a reliable indication of her wishes?
She had no problems before or after Doc. All signs point to her money hurgry husband as the more likey cause. That is why the case is still open.
Or if he wanted to avoid being seen as someone who wants to force people to live against their wishes, perhaps he could have said something to the effect that "I don't consider a married man who moves in with his mistress, sires two children by her, and pledges to marry her, worthy of the term 'husband'". Some things are complicated, but that seems pretty simple; too bad the media avoided expressing the case in terms like that.
I am sorry to hear about your father. It must be very difficult for you, so hard to know someone you love will only get worse. I have been through it myself with cancer, and you have my heartfelt sympathy.
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