Posted on 12/02/2003 11:28:31 AM PST by nickcarraway
Tallahassee, FL (LifeNews.com) -- An independent guardian appointed for Terri Schiavo told Governor Jeb Bush Tuesday that she deserves a permanent guardian other than her estranged husband Michael. He also claimed Terri is in a permanent vegetative state, but added that she should be re-evaluated by experts.
Under Terri's Law passed by the state legislature, an independent guardian was authorized to provide Governor Bush with recommendations about Terri's situation.
On October 31, Chief Pinellas-Pasco Chief Judge David Demers appointed Dr. Jay Wolfson, a professor of health and law at Stetson University in Florida, as Terri's guardian ad litem, despite the suggestion of bias from Terri's family.
Wolfson submitted a lengthy thirty-page report to Bush on Tuesday.
According to a source familiar with the report, Wolfson describes Terri as being in a persistent vegetative state. However, numerous doctors say otherwise and videos made by Terri's parents show her responding to doctors and her family.
Dr. William Hammesfahr, a neurologist from Clearwater, where Terri was hospitalized, is a recognized national expert on PVS and is a Nobel prize nominee. He says Terri's eyes clearly fixate on her family and she tries to follow the simple commands her parents give her.
"She looks at you, she can follow commands," Hammesfahr said.
Wolfson says Terri should be granted a permanent guardian other than Michael Schiavo. Among other concerns, Terri's family says has denied her appropriate medical and rehabilitative care he was obligated to provide from a medical malpractice award he received.
Wolfson also said medical experts should be brought in to evaluate Terri's cognitive function and her rehabilitative abilities.
Following the passage of Terri's Law, Wolfson told WFTS-TV in Tampa, Florida: "If this law stands the constitutional test of the courts, then it certainly implies the executive of our state has the prerogative of injecting the state into your life, or your family member's life."
Pat Anderson, the family's attorney, later told LifeNews.com that they met with Wolfson and were "very hopeful he can get his work done in the thirty days given to him."
Related web sites:
Terri's family - http://www.terrisfight.org
Bush's response to Wolfson's report here.
"Further, there is no claim or mention that anyone tried to starve her to death."
According to her husband the doctors tried to. He had to threaten to take the doctors to court to get them to back off.
First, you say there is no claim or mention that anyone tried to starve her to death, then in the next post to me you say you saw the interview where the husband claimed just that. Why did you post something you knew not to be true?
Each state is different and doctors will often have the ability to overrule family members. I believe her husband.
The doctors denied my father medical help abitrarily over the objections of our family. His chest cavity would fill up with fluids and they would drain the chest. One time however, they were going to let him die in this painful manner over our objections. It was like drowning slowly. He was in so much pain. I wouldn't wish it on my worse enemy. We had to make a scene before the doctors relented and drained his chest.
I never thought of this either. We just had an agent come out to the house to talk about long term health insurance.
We just had an agent come out to the house to talk about long term health insurance.
Well, wouldn't that be a boondoggle for an enterprising, unethical insurance company? Particularly if they could have them quietly slip away in some out-of-the-way hospice willing to reap profit$ to oblige? I've read enough of the statutes to believe there could have been a lot of premeditation and possibly collusion, on the part of a host of groups and agencies, who may have lobbied to have some of the more draconian measures passed, the food and water being 'life support', just one of them.
If I'm not mistaken, his recommendation is redundant, since I believe that it is THE LAW, but his recommendation is appreciated from this corner, nevertheless, since the only GAL who had Terri's exclusive interests at heart was FIRED by Greer, for just that reason.
The statement "there is no claim or mention that anyone tried to starve her to death" was referring to Adamson's website.
Had you read all of the articles you would have found that the "starving to death" issue was not mentioned for the years prior to the Terri Schiavo case and "Adamson's 70 days in PVS" talk show tour.
Read the articles- in was a mattter of only two weeks in the ICU before the Dr's and nurses could communicate with her quite well. So much for the 70 days headlines.
As to her lawyer husband, upon examination his claim makes no sense. He claims he was the one that discovered his wife could communicate. Furthermore, read the articles, Adamson herself relates that she communicated with her Dr while still in the ICU regarding whether or not she was going to die, to which he responded no.
Based upon the content of the articles Adamson herself posted to her own webpage, I find the "starve to death" claims incredible.
The following is excerpted from Enforcing the "Right to Die" by Nancy Valko, RN
This statement was particularly discouraging since Father Gerard Murphy, a pastor and former hospital chaplain, had already testified for Terri's husband that withdrawing Terri's tube feedings "would be consistent with the teaching of the Catholic church".6
Unfortunately, there is a long history of Catholic priests and ethicists who have given similar testimony in other public "right to die" cases without rebuttal by the local bishop, despite Church documents and a 1998 statement by Pope John Paul II emphasizing that "the omission of nutrition and hydration intended to cause a patient's death must be rejected".7 Instead, these priests and ethicists uniformly mischaracterize people like Terri Schiavo as "gravely ill" and simple feeding tubes as "prolonging death".
Unfortunately, these ethicists have often held prominent positions in Catholic health care and education for years. It has now become harder and harder to find a Catholic health facility that does more than provide mere lip service to principle on this crucial issue. It is telling that when Archbishop Justin Rigali of St. Louis issued a statement quoting Church teaching during the Steven Becker "right to die" case in 2000, many Catholic priests and ethicists from around the country criticized him for taking such an uninformed and "extreme" position in defense of life.8
Therefore, it is welcome news that Catholic groups are now challenging such misrepresentations in the Terri Schiavo case. Women for Faith & Family president Helen Hitchcock sent a letter to Florida Governor Jeb Bush asking him to "review Terri Schiavo's case and to intercede on her behalf", noting that Women for Faith & Family has filed amicus briefs in the similar Cruzan and Busalacchi cases.9 A Catholic media coalition sent a public letter to all the Florida bishops calling for them "to publicly condemn the injustice and moral evil of this deliberate act of euthanasia and to issue a plea for mercy to the Florida courts and to Governor Jeb Bush".10 The Catholic Medical Association issued a statement that "discontinuing nutrition and hydration in this circumstance violates in its intention the distinction between 'causing death' and 'allowing death'" and quotes the 1989 pastoral statement of the Bishops of Florida that states "We can never justify the withdrawal of sustenance on the basis of the quality of life of the patient".11
The National Catholic Partnership on Disability, which includes Cardinal Francis George on its board, has highlighted the differences between Terry Wallis, a man who recently regained full consciousness after 19 years when his family refused to give up, and Terri Schiavo, whose husband is seeking to end her life. In their press release, Mary Jane Owen, executive director of the partnership, states, "those of us who live with assorted disabilities are aware that when any of us is deprived of their essential dignity and worth, each of us face that same discounting by the judgments of the culture of death".12
A Precedent-Setting Case
The importance of saving Terri cannot be overestimated, not only for her right to live but also to apply a brake to the current "right to die" movement that seems bent on terminating people with severe brain injuries or conditions. It is no accident that people like Terri are put into hospices and cases like hers are included in "end of life" education programs for health care professionals and the public. It is no coincidence that withdrawal of treatment decisions have become the justification for the new non-heartbeating organ donation policies.13 And it is the ultimate irony that even families and patients who choose to live can now be overruled by medical futility policies being instituted at hospitals throughout the country.
Terri's family has put up a courageous fight to save their daughter's life and, if they finally lose, a terrible precedent will be set for coercing other families to give up fighting for their loved ones. If evidence of Terri's responsiveness, as well as questions of possible perjury and bias, continue to be ignored by the courts, no one with a disability is ultimately safe from medical or legal discrimination. Bob Schindler, Terri's father, poignantly observes, "We pay great lip service in this country to disability rights, but as the degree of a person's disability increases, the level of legal protection that person receives decreases".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.