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James 2:13
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TROLL ALERT: Most of you by now have realized that the Terri threads have been crawling with trolls. As a result, some threads with good information have gotten pulled and others have gone off on tangents. I offer this post for both amusement and edification. I have spotted 3 different kinds of trolls frequenting these threads. Perhaps the graphic representations will serve as a reminder and help keep them in perspective. And because not all trolls are created equal, they should be handled in different ways.
Type 1: Howler Trolls (Thanks drlevy88 for that moniker)
These are by far the easiest to spot. These are the ones that chum the threads with juvenile insults and inuendo in an active attempt to start a flame war. These are the playground bullies and instigators who simply have too little mental capacity to suitably occupy the excess time they seem to have on their hands. They like to throw feces for the sheer fun they have watching the reactions of those who get hit and nothing delights them more than being able to provoke otherwise intelligent posters into engaging in a p*ssing contest. The best way to deal with this type is to simply ignore them. They will quickly tire of the game if they get no "bites."
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Type 2: Stealth Trolls
These are wretched and misguided gollum-like creatures, repugnant and odious on the one hand and pathetic on the other. It is a mistake to underestimate this type. They can be clever and aggressive, but only when they think they have you on the defense. Going on the offense can reduce this type to a cowering blob, who will then seek to elicit pity and empathy. They are often not what they appear to be. They may be, on the one hand, those who are seeking to find answers themselves, while on the other, enjoying the sense of power they feel at being able to manipulate others. My advice would be not to engage them unless you can deal a blow that will send them running for cover. Depending on their persistence and level of disruption, it may or may not necessary to report them to the moderators.
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Type 3: Black Trolls
These may be the most difficult of all to spot. They may wrap themselves in all the right words to make themselves seem to be allies. They may appear to make cogent arguments. Satan himself comes as an angel of light. This type is pure evil and once discovered must be dispatched post haste and should be reported. This type should not be engaged furthur. He will not relent when he is outed by one poster....he will move on to seek more vulnerable prey. The damage can be cumulative. Argument with this type is futile. He is part of the problem.
All that said, there is still plenty of room for honest disagreement and we shouldn't be too quick to dismiss those that are simply ignorant of the facts of the case. I also think that the moderators probably get tired of "tattle tales" over every perceived slight and would prefer that we handle it ourselves to the extent that we can reasonably do so, and not be too quick on the abuse button. At the same time, it is important to remember that we have very high visibility and we have made a lot of noise and more than a few waves and there are those out there who are threatened by it, so it is important to be discerning. I made this post on this thread because it has been blessedly free of trolls, and I hope that it stays that way. Be careful out there friends of Terri....this is war.
Having Your Cake And Eating It
I think it's been pretty clear to most of my readers that I don't think much of Michael Schiavo. I find his story about Terri's "wish" to not be kept alive incredible, I find his efforts to portray himself as the caring husband unbelievable, and his attempt to portray Bob & Mary Schindler as the villains of the conflict contemptible. Furthermore, if, as I suspect, it was his actions which put Terri in her current state, his behavior would have been despicable.
These sentiments, as they have found their way into my writing about Terri, have prompted some to accuse me of "hating" Michael or of being uncharitable towards him. This, of course, is false. I don't hate Michael: I think he is pursuing an evil course of action against an innocent third person, and as such, it is my duty, and that of every other decent person, to try to stop him. If he relented from his relentless pursuit of Terri's death I'd be perfectly content to let him go about his life and never utter another word about him.
But I am not, in charity, obliged to pretend his actions and stated intentions are somehow less evil than they are, or to make believe that whatever good Michael might do in other spheres of his life somehow makes up for or negates the evil he is inflicting on Terri. That is, it would be silly for me to say, "Michael is nice to the child he had by his girlfriend, so he must be a decent guy, and he must have a point in wanting Terri dead." It is not charity to ignore or make light of evil actions or designs, especially when they involve the life of an innocent person.
Which brings me to my point. After reading today's article "The Guardian", by Wesley J. Smith, I realize now what it is about Michael's actions and statements that I find so reprehensible: It is that Michael is trying to have it both ways. He is trying to have his cake and eat it too.
The Schindlers have not made their allegations of abuse (which are founded on medical evidence), or disputed Michael's claim to be acting upon Terri's wishes out of some desire to hurt him. They have not challenged his self-touted image as the caring husband because they have some ill-will toward him. They're doing so, and I have taken up their cause, because his claims and image are false.
It was Michael who went to the court and, in effect, said, "my wife told me she didn't want to live like this, so please let me kill her." It was Michael who claimed that he was acting out of his love towards Terri. It was Michael who went on Larry King Live and tried to convince us that he was the caring and long-suffering husband.
And, as the Schindlers told me last week, they find his claims to be false and his pose as the loving husband to be unbelievable. I was convinced of that by what the Schindlers told me, what I read in court documents and medical testimony, and by Michael's own performance on Larry King.
The Schindlers told me that the first court-appointed guardian ad litem, Richard Pearse, found Michael to be incredible. Now, as Smith's article makes clear, Pearse's report and recommendations substantially support Bob & Mary Schindlers' statements to me:
Bob & Mary told me that Michael withheld treatment from Terri for an infection. The treatment consisted of a routine course of antibiotics. Mr. Pearse found that "Early in 1994, for example, he refused to consent to treat an infection from which the ward was then suffering and ordered that she not be resuscitated in the event of cardiac arrest. "
Furthermore, the Schindlers, in their account of the initial dispute that caused their estrangement, said that it became clear to them at that point that Michael didn't intend to follow through on his promises to seek rehabilitation for Terri. Mr. Pearse saw it the same way. Smith wrote:
Pearse confirmed the charge by the Schindlers that once the medical malpractice money was in the bank, Schiavo began to refuse medical treatment for Terri, writing:
After February 1993, Mr. Schiavo's attitude concerning treatment for the ward apparently changed.
"It is apparent to me," Pearse wrote the court, "that he has reached a point that he has no hope of the ward's recovery and wants to get on with his own life." Smith adds: To say the least. At the time of Pearse's investigation, Schiavo was already living with the woman who would become the mother of his children.
his credibility is necessarily adversely affected by the obvious financial benefit to him of being the ward's sole heir at law in the event of her death while still married to him. Her death also permits him to get on with his own life.
The Village Voice: Nation: Nat Hentoff: A Woman's Life Versus an Inept Press
We don't have full understanding of brain damage and consciousness . . . every patient is different . . . every patient's pattern of brain damage is different. —Dr. Ross Bullock, Reynolds professor of neurosurgery at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, Newsday, October 26
I have covered highly visible, dramatic "right to die" cases—including those of Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan—for more than 25 years. Each time, most of the media, mirroring one another, have been shoddy and inaccurate.
The reporting on the fierce battle for the life of 39-year-old Terri Schiavo has been the worst case of this kind of journalistic malpractice I've seen.
On October 15, Terri's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, ordered the removal of her feeding tube. As she was dying, the Florida legislature and Governor Jeb Bush overruled her husband on October 21, and the gastric feeding tube has been reinserted pending further recourse to the court.
So intent is Michael Schiavo on having his wife die of starvation that one of his lawyers, after the governor's order to reconnect the feeding tube, faxed doctors in the county where the life-saving procedure was about to take place, threatening to sue any physician who reinserted a feeding tube. The husband had immediately gone to court to get a judge to revoke what the legislature and the governor had done.
The husband claims that he is honoring his marriage vows by carrying out the wishes of his wife that she not be kept alive by "artificial means." As I shall show, this hearsay "evidence" by the husband has been contradicted. The purportedly devoted husband, moreover, has been living with another woman since 1995. They have a child, with another on the way. Was that part of his marital vows?
For 13 years, Terri Schiavo has not been able to speak for herself. But she is not brain-dead, not in a comatose state, not terminal, and not connected to a respirator. If the feeding tube is removed, she will starve to death. Whatever she may or may not have said, did she consider food and water "artificial means?"
The media continually report that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state, and a number of neurologists and bioethicists have more than implied to the press that "persistent" is actually synonymous with "permanent." This is not true, as I shall factually demonstrate in upcoming columns. I will also provide statements from neurologists who say that if Terri were given the proper therapy—denied to her by her husband and guardian after he decided therapy was becoming too expensive despite $750,000 from a malpractice suit—she could learn to eat by herself and become more responsive.
Terri is responsive, beyond mere reflexes. Having this degree of sentience, if she is starved to death, she will not "die in peace" as The New York Times predicts in an uninformed October 23 editorial supporting the husband. What happens to someone who can feel pain during the process of starvation is ghastly.
Increasingly, New York Times editorials are not as indicative of conscious liberal "bias" as they are of ignorance or denial of the facts, as I have demonstrated in my series on Judge Charles Pickering.
In all the stories on Terri Schiavo and her parents' determined efforts to save her life, the media continually report that the Florida legislature intervened because of many thousands of calls, letters, and e-mails from the Christian right and pro-lifers. Those groups and individuals are indeed a major factor in rousing support to prevent Terri from being starved to death. But among the many others who sent urgent messages are disabled Americans and their organizations.
Except for the op-ed page article by Stephen Drake of the Not Dead Yet organization in the October 29 Los Angeles Times ("Disabled Are Fearful: Who Will Be Next?") and a letter in the October 24 New York Times, I have seen hardly any mention in the press of the deeply concerned voices of the disabled, many of whom, in their own lives, have survived being terminated by bioethicists and other physicians who strongly believe that certain lives are not worth living. The numbers of these "new priesthoods of death," as I call them, are increasing.
The letter to The New York Times signed by Max Lapertosa, staff counsel, Access Living in Chicago—told of "14 national disability organizations that filed a friend-of-the-court brief to support keeping Terri Schiavo alive." Lapertosa objected to a Times editorial calling for Terri to go gently into that good night because, said the moral philosophers of the Times, "true respect for life includes recognizing . . . when it ceases to be meaningful."
Max Lapertosa reminded Gail Collins's board of oracles at the Time's editorial page that "many would lump into this category [of meaningless lives] people with severe autism, multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy who, like Mrs. Schiavo, are nonverbal and are often described as being "in their own world."
"The judicial sanctioning of such attitudes," Lapertosa continued, "moves America back to the days when the sterilization and elimination of people with disabilities did not merely reflect private prejudices but were embraced as the law of the land."
In the Los Angeles Times' October 29 op-ed piece by Stephen Drake, he writes: "I was born brain-damaged as a result of a forceps delivery. The doctor told my parents I would be a 'vegetable' for the rest of my life—the same word now being used for Schiavo—and that the best thing would be for nature to take its course. They refused. Although I had a lot of health problems, surgeries and pain as a child, I went on to lead a happy life." And clearly, his is a very articulate life. I have interviewed other such "vegetables."
Ignoring the facts of the case, the American Civil Liberties Union—to my disgust, but not my surprise in view of the long-term distrust of the ACLU by disability rights activists—has marched to support the husband despite his grave conflicts of interests in this life-or-death case. The ACLU claims the governor and the legislature of Florida unconstitutionally overruled the courts, which continued to declare the husband the lawful guardian. On the other hand, the ACLU cheered when Governor George Ryan of Illinois substituted his judgment for that of the courts by removing many prisoners from death row. In a later column, I'll go deeper into the constitutional debate over saving Terri's life.
In the October 28 weeklystandard.com, Wesley Smith, author of Forced Exit—who has accurately researched more of these cases than anyone I know—reports that of the $750,000 to be held in trust for Terri's rehabilitation, two of Michael Schiavo's lawyers pressing for removal of her feeding tube have been paid more than $440,000. Whom did that rehabilitate? Any comment from the ACLU? If the husband and the lawyers succeed, maybe the ACLU will send flowers to Terri's funeral.
"Nuclear Imaging
"BONE SCAN
"3-5-91
"Indication: Evaluate for trauma
"Procedure and findings. Multiple gama camera images of the axial [trunk] and proximal appendicular [limbs] skeleton in the anterior [front] and posterior [back] projections were obtained following 2.1 millicuries of technetium 99m HDP.
"There are an extensive number of focal abnormal areas of nuclide accumulation of intense type. These include multiple bilateral ribs, the costovertebral [where ribs and vertebra come together] aspects of several of the thoracic [upper] vertebral bodies, the L1 [lower] vertebral body, both sacroliac joints, the distal right femoral diaphysis, both knees and both ankles, the right greater than the left.
"Correlative radiographs are obtained of the lumbar spine and of the right femur [leg bone] which reveal compression fracture; minor, superior and plate of L1, and shaggy, irregular periosteal ossification along the distal femoral diaphysis, and metaphysis primarily ventrally. [calcification showing where bones were broken and have healed].
"The patient has a history of trauma. Most likely the femoral periosteal reaction reflects a response to a subperiosteal hemorrhage and the activity in L1 correlates perfectly with the compression fracture which is presumably traumatic.
"The presumptions is that the other multiple areas of abnormal activity also relate to previous trauma. Additional possibilities would be neoplastic bone disease, widespread disseminated infectious bone disease or multiple bone infarcts from abnormal hemoglobin.
"CONCLUSION: Multiple areas of abnormal scintigraphic [actinographic?] accumulation, some of which are radiograph for differential as discussed above.
"W. Campbell Walker M.D./mjt
"Dictated 3-5-91
"Lee Memorial Hospital"
Rumor Correction Alert!
It has been reported that Bob & Mary Schindler were "axed" from the "Larry King Live" program. They were scheduled to appear tonight.
While it is true that they will not be appearing tonight, it has nothing to do with Larry King. Nothing nefarious going on here.
Bob Schindler has been having some heart and blood pressure problems in the last couple of weeks (one might guess as to the cause...).
So his doctors have ordered him to do nothing for a week. The Schindlers have tentatively rescheduled their Larry King appearance for next Friday, November 14.
Say a prayer for the Schindlers.
Why Doesn't Michael Divorce Terri?
A frequent question brought up regarding Michael Schiavo's relentless pursuit of Terri's death is, "Why doesn't he just divorce her and walk away?" Bob & Mary Schindler have begged Michael to do just that, saying that they will be happy to care for her. He would then be free to "move on" with his own life; marry his live-in girlfriend, etc.
Michael's response to that question, put to him last week by Larry King, was just as unconvincing as his confabulated tale of Terri's supposed wish not to be kept alive. All he can say are things like: "This is between Terri and myself. I'm not asking anybody to be mad at me. I'm not asking anybody to agree with me."
I have been thinking a lot about that question for the last few days, and I think I have some possible answers to it. Obviously, what I offer here are speculations, but they're speculations that I think fit what we know of the case.
Firstly, Michael might have some difficulty obtaining a divorce from Terri in Florida. From what Terri's parents told me and what I have learned about Florida law, Michael might find it difficult or even impossible to divorce Terri because she is disabled and unable to respond to a petition for divorce. The laws in Florida, in all likelihood, are written as they are to prevent people from divorcing their disabled spouses and dumping their care on the state. Of course, that well-intended law now works to Terri's detriment.
So then what about the possibility of moving Terri to another state, which would permit the divorce more readily? At first I thought the Schindlers might have objected to having Terri moved, but when I brought up the idea with Bob, he said, "if Michael wanted to move Terri to another state to divorce her, I'd say, 'let's do it tonight.'"
But, even then, there are other reasons why moving Terri and divorcing her wouldn't be acceptable to Michael. If Michael had divorced Terri say, five years ago, there would have still been around $700,000 in Terri's settlement fund. But in a divorce, Michael would be lucky to get even a third of it. Any competent lawyer representing Terri would realize that much of that money would be needed for Terri's care, and wouldn't have allowed Michael to get much of it at all.
No, a divorce wouldn't have given Michael what he wanted, if it was money he was after. In a divorce, Michael walks away with maybe $250,000. If Terri died, he would have gotten it all.
Now, of course, there isn't much money to be had. By all accounts, much of the money has gone to pay for Michael's lawyers. Michael says there's only about $50,000 left in the fund, and lawyer George Felos laments that he hasn't been paid since July (poor guy). Even allowing for Michael low-balling the amount left in the fund, there wouldn't be enough in there to care for Terri for more than a few years.
So now, for Michael, divorce is the last thing he wants. Not only in a divorce would he get nothing, he might even be required by the court to contribute to Terri's care, possibly for the rest of her life. He'd come out of the bargain worse off than when he entered it.
Then we come to what might be the more "intangible" considerations: Whatever motivations Michael may have had in seeking Terri's death, for George Felos, this is part of his Crusade of Death. Mr. Felos has built his legal practice around seeking the death of the diseased, elderly, and disabled. He has been a member of the Hemlock Society and is an advocate of euthanasia. Felos wants to expand the parameters within which we will find death not only acceptable, but desirable. And I think it was clear from the Larry King appearance that Felos is now the engineer of the train. Michael, it seems to me, may be a brute, but he is fundamentally a small, banal man. Michael is neither smart enough, nor evil enough, to have followed through for this long. And now Michael's only hope of seeing his wish for Terri's death come to fruition is to stay hitched to that train.
It would not suit Felos' purposes at all for Michael to divorce Terri. If that happened, Felos wouldn't have his test case. And Felos is not alone in wanting this test case. I do not think it is an accident that George Felos had Dr. Ronald Cranford appear as the chief medical witness for Michael. Dr. Cranford testified that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state, and will never recover. Although I hold, as I have written before, that Terri's "recoverability" is not the real issue, nonetheless Cranford's testimony on that score is hardly disinterested. He jokingly refers to himself as "Dr. Death," and for a fee he will come to your trial and testify that the person whose life you want ended is in a PVS. He was the leading medical voice calling for the deaths of Paul Brophy, Nancy Jobes, Nancy Cruzan, and Christine Busalucci. And what manner of death was prepared for all those about whom he testified? Removal of food and water, leading to death by dehydration/starvation.
Nancy Cruzan required no skilled nursing, no care but food and fluids, hygiene and turning to prevent bedsores. Indeed, she didn't require tube feeding. But Cranford testified that he would even consider spoon-feeding for Nancy Cruzan to be "medical treatment". Dr. Cranford has written that he foresees "that there may be extreme situations, and in the future increasingly common situations, where physician-assisted suicide may not only be permissible, but encouraged." In an op-ed piece for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune, Dr. Cranford advocated the starvation of Alzheimer's patients. Granny better hope and pray she remembers her grandkids' birthdays if Dr. Cranford gets his way.
Dr. Cranford is one of the leaders of the Death Crusade. He sees death as a solution to the problems posed by the elderly and disabled, and so wants more of it. George Felos demonstrates where he is coming from and what he is after by employing him. There are hundreds of thousands of elderly people in Florida, posing what Cranford called "challenges and costs" to society. A win in Terri's case would set a legal precedent, allowing Felos and the other acolytes of the euthanasia movement to help all those people to shuffle off this mortal coil a little more quickly than otherwise.
Mr. Felos has his own reasons for assisting Michael in his pursuit of Terri's death. Michael's reasons are, perhaps, more humble, but now they're attached to Felos.
Michael may have another reason for seeking Terri's death, though. It might be the same reason he has ordered that Terri is not to have an autopsy when she dies, and that her body is to be cremated...