Posted on 05/28/2007 9:33:12 AM PDT by wagglebee
The Christian attorney who fought to keep Terry Schiavo alive says the three leading GOP presidential candidates don't understand the important disability issues involved in the widely publicized 2005 case.
During a recent Republican presidential debate in California, the candidates were asked whether Congress was right to intervene in the Terry Schiavo case by attempting to prevent the state of Florida from removing the disabled woman's feeding tube. The answers varied.
Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, said he thought it "was a mistake" for Congress to get involved and the matter should have been left at the state level. Senator John McCain said Congress "probably acted too hastily." And former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani called the case a "family dispute."
David Gibbs III of the Christian Law Association says the United States gives greater due process to convicted murderers than to innocent disabled people. The former attorney for Schiavo's parents argues that Congress did the right thing when it intervened to provide her those rights.
"Many of the candidates are following the political wind, if you will, instead of showing leadership and saying, 'You know what? That was good public policy back then. We need to stand up for the disabled. We need to stand up for the senior citizens,'" Gibbs says. "We need to have that compassion for vulnerable people as opposed to taking the mindset that those people that just don't matter," he notes.
It is disingenuous, the Christian attorney contends, for candidates to claim they are pro-life but not be willing to grant due process rights to the disabled. "If you're pro-life, you have to be pro-life at every step," he says.
"Please understand: our founding fathers understood that you don't have any liberty, our Constitution doesn't matter, if you don't protect the innocent life of the citizens," Gibbs explains. "That's why they talked about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- your free speech, your freedom of religion, your right to own a gun or [receive] due process of law," he says. "If the government can kill you, you have no true liberty."
When Rudy Giuliani visited Florida he initially said he was in favor of assisting Terry Schiavo but later backpedaled from those comments, Gibbs points out. And in the recent GOP presidential debate, he says, only Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and Congressman Duncan Hunter of California got the issue right when they were asked about the Schiavo case.
Great! Go back then and reread and copy the testimony relating to
His testimony towards the end concurs with the possibilities that certain of the injuries could be the result of a kick, being thrown into sharp furniture corner, being hit with a blunt object like a golf club.
because if you do, you'll see that he said that only about one particular hot spot, the one on the femur. Not the hot spots on the ribs. Not the compression fracture.
As I said before, I will not engage you in discussions of medical matters whereas you are the MD and you have the vocabulary.
I have to suspect it's because you don't like what the medical evidence really shows.
Wow, you are really in to this topic, almost as if you had a dog in this fight.
But I do, I hate to see scientific misinformation, I hate to see people assert that the medicine shows something when that is not what the medicine says.
Sorry, an honest examiner doesn't get to ignore the facts and say, "oh it couldn't happen that way? Nitpicking! I'm sure it happened some way so let's convict!"
Dr. Walker, a radiologist, felt the hot spots were from fractures. The rehab docs disagreed and felt it was heterotrophic ossification. The autopsy report agreed heterotrophic ossification was far more likely. So there are two opinions on whether it was trauma at all. Aside from Dr. Walker's opinion, there is no evidence for the type of severe trauma it would take to cause fractures like that, and the fact that it wasn't found in the ER and hospitalization is actually evidence against it.
But it's what you want to believe, so it must have happened that way. Obviously you are free to believe whatever you want, but claiming that the medical evidence supports that position is wrong. I hope you never serve on a jury.
He specified auto wrecks for a reason - they cause a certain injury pattern. Domestic violence bad enough to cause multiple bilateral rib fractures would damage underlying organs and cause bruising. Ask your docs who gave the "someone beat the hell our of her" opinion about that. See if they can find a scenario that would cause multiple bilateral rib fractures without external evidence or obvious internal injuries.
RIGHT! LET ME KNOW WHERE TO SUBMIT MY NAMES FOR THE LIST.
VAUDINE
I’ll be really curious as to what your docs reply to your questions, if you have the intellectual honesty to ask them. For your sake, I hope you do.
A good start:
1. If these were all fractures, can you come up with a mechanism where these injuries could be caused by domestic violence, and the patient had no external signs of injury, and no internal injury? What is that mechanism?
2. Do you think it likely that a post cardiac arrest patient brought in with these fractures could go through an emergency room stay and prolonged hospital stay and no one would ever find any of these fractures?
I reported this, and your equally offensive comment above that I should not be on a jury, as abuse.
He did NOT specify auto wrecks.
And what's wrong with his web site? Looks good to me. He has won approval from the state of Florida and the federal government.
Dr. Hammesfahr was nominated to the committee for the Nobel Prize for his work in Medicine and Physiology in 1999. The Nomination was for work started in 1994. In 2000, this work resulted in approval for the first patent in history granted for the treatment of neurological diseases including coma, stroke, brain injury, cerebral palsy, hypoxic injuries and other neurovascular disorders with medications that restore blood flow to the brain. It was extended to treat successfully disabilities including ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Tourette's and Autism as well as behaviorally and emotionally disturbed children, seizures and severe migraines. The federal government has recognized Dr. Hammesfahr’s clinical expertise, naming him Reviewer and Chief Reviewer for evaluation and funding for new clinical research programs. He has also been a court-recognized expert and a court-ordered treating physician for these techniques that he pioneered. He has lectured and published extensively. Dr. Hammesfahr graduated from the Northwestern Honors Program in Medical Education in 1982, a program which only accepts a small number of high school students directly into medical school. He then trained in Neurosurgery and Neurology at the Medical College in Virginia. He has received Board Certification in both Neurology and Pain Management.
Let me know when you're done patting yourself on the back and questioning others' honesty.
Let me know when you stop patting yourself on the back and questioning others' honesty.
You are bragging about a stacked deck. Michael did not permit Terri to be examined by disinterested physicians or facilities. OF COURSE Michael's selected doctors agreed with Michael.
A large number of doctors who examined Terri's medical records and evidentiary videos came forward to state that in their professional expertise, Terri was not PVS. They gave specific observations of specific cognitive behaviors to back up their views. At least thirty medical doctors and professionals gave such affidavits and testimony.
Let me know when you stop patting yourself on the back and questioning others' honesty.
Knock off the personal comments.
> because if you do, you'll see that he said that only about one particular hot spot, the one on the femur. Not the hot spots on the ribs. Not the compression fracture
Yes, that's an unusual blunt force injury and it helped to frame and focus my theory. I figured the bone bruise must have been caused by the assailant's right knee digging into Terri's right thigh.
Nobody offers any other idea. It isn't like she woke up at 5:30 on a Sunday morning, accidentally smacked herself on the thigh with a golf club while walking to the bathroom and mysteriously fell dead (almost) on the spot.
Has Fred Thompson said anything about Terri’s case?
I seem to be getting under your skin.
Since you know darned well what the testimony says, it is clear to me you likely have a copy in front of you,and are guiding the direction in favor of your perspective. You are narrowing it down to a discussion of specifics upon which you can discourse as an MD and I am concerned about the event itself and what happened to Terri so our focus is a little different.
I am not very whelmed by your bedside manner on this forum. Nevertheless I jump at the chance to complete the record as you challenged me.
You do remind me of MD's who advised on our son, and whom we wisely did not bother to follow.
From the 2003 testimony of William C. Walker, M.D., extract:
Referencing the fracture of the right femur, starting with line 20...
Q. Okay. In your opinion, is that something that would show up in a bone scan?
A. I would think only if the joint were injured would it show up on a bone scan. Just simple manipulation of an injured part should not show up as an abnormality on a bone scan.
Q. Would a kick be the kind of direct blow that would produce that femoral abnormality?
A. That would be a possibility, yes.
Q. Would being thrown into a sharp furniture corner?
A. That would be a possibility.
Q. Would being struck with some sort of blunt object like a golf club or something do it?
A. Yes.
there...
Your suspicions of motives are projections again. I am interested in truth.
I have a good understanding now of where you fit in with all this but thank you for helping get this out into the open. I am always glad to see all the details in the open, as opposed to the cloud cast on poor Terri and her family by the Media and the left wing.
I, too, hate to see scientific misinformation.
But, given the failure of Florida prosecuters, the Florida executive branch up to the governor, and the Florida courts to find a prosecutable offense in this case, what's next?
In other words, lets stipulate that Michael Schiavo got away with murder, as seems probable.
Apart from shunning him in restaurants, what do you think should happen?
Heterotopic ossification, if it matters. Let us by all means revisit. This is Dr. CBB (radiologist) on the point:
(As before, font color simply to set this off as quotation, not for any particular emphasis.)
The doctor who commented upon the bone scan, a Dr. Carnahan, medical director at Mediplex in Bradenton, Manatee County, Florida mysteriously "wrote off" the bone scan and attributed the results to "heterotopic ossification" which can commonly happen in patients with spinal cord injuries or brain injuries. But usually not so quickly! And, Terri had a compression fracture in her lumbar spine and an injury to the middle of her femur, which cannot be explained away so easily, are extremely unlikely to have been caused by "heterotopic ossification," and cannot be explained away by attributing them to vigorous "therapy." Did the doctor, Carnahan, just "miss it?"
I think he should find God, repent his crimes, beg forgiveness and confess.
It would have the interesting effect of bringing down a very large house of cards. A lot of people are staking a lot of their reputation in order to cover for a probable criminal. A very mean one at that.
Dunno. I hope he does. It will be a real test of his courage. The man strikes me as pretty gutsy, so I will hope he stands up for what's right on this one.
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