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Terri Schiavo Autopsy: Manner of Death 'Undetermined'
CNSNews.com ^ | June 15, 2005 | Jeff Johnson

Posted on 06/15/2005 12:27:19 PM PDT by veronica

(1st Add: Includes comments from George Felos, Michael Schiavo's attorney.)

(CNSNews.com) - Terri Schiavo's body did not show any signs of trauma or other criminal activity that would explain her brain injury, nor was there evidence to support previous diagnoses of a heart attack or an eating disorder, the Florida medical examiner who conducted her autopsy said Wednesday. A representative of Terri's family complimented the report, but said it still leaves many questions unanswered.

"She died of dehydration," Dr. Jon Thogmartin, the Florida medical examiner for Pinellas and Pasco counties said, noting that the official cause of death would be listed as "complications of anoxic encephalopathy."

"That's the only diagnosis that I know for sure, is that her brain went without oxygen," he added. "Why? That is undetermined."

George Felos - attorney for Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo - said the report confirms what he has argued all along.

"The courts have found that there was no abuse of Terri, no evidence of abuse, and that's what the medical examiner found," Felos said.

Terri Schiavo collapsed under unknown circumstances in 1990. Michael Schiavo was awarded nearly $2 million in judgments and settlements in a medical malpractice lawsuit claiming that the collapse was caused by a heart attack triggered by a potassium imbalance, caused by an undiagnosed eating disorder, bulimia nervosa. Thogmartin challenged that determination.

"No one observed Mrs. Schiavo taking diet pills, binging and purging or consuming laxatives and she apparently never confessed to her family or friends about having an eating disorder," Thogmartin found. "Furthermore, many other signs of bulimia nervosa were not reported to be present."

Terri was "heavy" as a teenager, according to Thogmartin, and had lost more than 100 pounds after graduation. The eating disorder diagnosis was based on that fact and a low potassium level measured during a blood test about an hour after Terri was first hospitalized.

"Her low potassium level appears to be the main piece of evidence purporting to show that she had an eating disorder," Thogmartin said. But he noted that she received numerous medical treatments when she arrived at the hospital that would have lowered that measurement.

"Thus the main piece of evidence supporting the diagnosis of bulimia nervosa is suspect," he concluded.

"Once you eliminate the potassium problem, which is known in bulimics, you end up with a 26-year-old who used to be healthy, who now lost the weight, is reveling in her thinness now, enjoying her life and doesn't want to gain the weight back," Thogmartin said. "If that's a bulimic, there's a lot of bulimics out there. It's just not enough."

Thogmartin said that because he cannot, "with reasonable medical certainty," ascertain why or how the blood and oxygen to Terri's brain were interrupted, he cannot rule on what started the chain of events that led to her death.

"The manner of death is different from the cause of death. Manner of death is the circumstances of death or how the death came about," Thogmartin said. "Since I don't know the circumstances or can't tell, actually, what the underlying cause is, the manner of death has to be 'undetermined.'"

Other allegations and theories addressed

Thogmartin dismissed the theory that the oxygen depravation to Terri's brain might have been the result of a myocardial infarction, the medical term for a "heart attack," or death of heart muscle from coronary artery disease.

"Mrs. Schiavo's heart was anatomically normal without any areas of recent or remote infarction," he explained.

In response to the allegations that Terri's collapse was the result of a physical assault, Thogmartin noted that she received nearly 30 X-rays, CAT scans and ultrasound examinations during the medical examination that followed her collapse.

"Any fractures - including rib fractures, leg fractures, ankle fractures, skull fractures, spine fractures - that occurred concurrent with her initial collapse would almost certainly have been diagnosed in 1990, especially with the number of physical exams, radiographs and other evaluations she received during her initial hospitalization," Thogmartin said. "No fractures or trauma were reported or recorded."

There was also, Thogmartin said, "no evidence to support or the evidence did not support," various allegations that Terri was abused or neglected after her initial brain injury.

Was Terri in a Persistent Vegetative State?

Thogmartin brought in Dr. Stephen Nelson, an expert in pathology of the brain and central nervous system, as a consultant during the autopsy. Nelson stressed numerous times that the diagnosis of a "Persistent Vegetative State," which was used to justify the removal of the feeding tube that kept Terri alive, "is a clinical diagnosis, it's not a pathologic diagnosis that has precision associated with it." But he did not dispute the finding.

"There is nothing in her autopsy report, in her autopsy that is inconsistent with Persistent Vegetative State," Nelson said, adding that there was evidence to support the finding.

"A normal brain weight for somebody who is approximately 41 years of age ought to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 to 1,300 grams," Nelson explained. "Her brain is 615 grams and is largely reduced to what is termed granular atrophy ... associated with the loss of blood flow that happened many years prior.

"Those all are consistent with what is reported in the literature for Persistent Vegetative State," Nelson added. "We found nothing that is contrary to what has previously been reported for Persistent Vegetative State."

Nelson compared the physical condition of Terri's brain to that of Karen Ann Quinlan, the New Jersey woman who died in 1985 -- nine years after her parents won a court battle to remove her from a respirator.

"Her brain, Karen Ann Quinlan's, weighed more than Terri Schiavo's brain weighed," Nelson said. "The findings here are, perhaps, worse, even, than Karen Ann Quinlan."

Thogmartin also concluded that Terri's brain injury was irreversible.

"Her brain was profoundly atrophied," the medical examiner concluded. "This damage was irreversible and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."

Michael Schiavo relied on the diagnosis of a Persistent Vegetative State when he sought permission from the Florida courts to remove Terri's feeding tube. He and two of his relatives testified that Terri had said she would not want to be kept alive in such a condition. Thogmartin discussed the contention by many right-to-life advocates that Terri's family should have been allowed to offer her food and water by mouth after that feeding tube was removed.

"She would not have been able to consume sustenance safely or in sufficient quantity by mouth," Thogmartin said. "Mrs. Schiavo was dependent, therefore, on nutrition and hydration by her feeding tube and removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed by mouth or not."

In layman's terms

After a technical explanation of his findings, laden with medical language, Thogmartin was asked to summarize his findings in an exchange with one unidentified reporter:

REPORTER: "In layman's terms, did Terri Schiavo starve to death?"

THOGMARTIN: "No."

REPORTER: "Did she suffer any neglect or abuse?"

THOGMARTIN: "No."

REPORTER: "Will we ever know what caused her death?"

THOGMARTIN: "I don't know."

Pamela Hennessy, spokeswoman for the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation and Terri's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, complimented Thogmartin on his report.

"However, it does seem that the conclusions of his report leave as many unanswered questions as there were previously," Hennessy said. "For instance, if Terri did not suffer bulimia and she had as healthy a heart as Dr. Thogmartin proclaimed, what caused her collapse?

"It doesn't really bring much in the way of closure to [the Schindlers] as far as what happened to their daughter, why this happened in the first place and what could have been done for her," Hennessy concluded.

Thogmartin said he is open to answering those questions.

"It is the policy of this office that no case is ever closed, and that all determinations are to be reconsidered upon receipt of credible new information," he explained.

"In addition to fading memories, the 15-year survival of Mrs. Schiavo after her collapse resulted in the creation of a voluminous number of documents, many of which were lost or discarded over those years," he continued. "Receipt of additional credible information that clarifies any outstanding issues may, or shall cause an amendment to her cause and manner of death."


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: autopsy; facts; schiavo; schiavoautopsy; terrischiavo
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To: veronica

An analysis of the pathology report of TS cerebral cortex, shows it was "relatively" preserved. The posterior cerbral cortex was necrotic. The anterior cerbral cortex,being somewhat preserved, the report said, indicates that she may have perceived pain and thirst and hunger but could not convey this to people around her. The report is on World Net Daily. I have not read the report of the path findings put out by the ME, but this article is interesting.


861 posted on 06/17/2005 12:50:49 PM PDT by Texas Songwriter
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To: the OlLine Rebel
My "testimony" in court is hearsay in real life.

In a court setting, it is the legal definition which matters.

862 posted on 06/17/2005 1:32:03 PM PDT by malakhi
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To: backhoe

Still traveling, but thank you very much, backhoe, for the champiob effort. I'll post the link sometime this weekend, when I get my home computer put together again. [Moving is such a headache!]


863 posted on 06/17/2005 6:45:39 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: malakhi

You are really adept at assuming and asserting from your perspective. Untenable?... So smart, such a tricky term!


864 posted on 06/17/2005 6:47:13 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: amdgmary

"The moral shame of what happened is not erased because of Terri’s level of disability." It is truly astonishing how many people see no shame in this case. And they do so enjoy playing at agitprop when confronting those who do see a shame here. Sadly, mischaracterization appears to have become a methodology with people in both camps. It has been my experience over six decades that when so much division is so sharply defined and energized, there is another force working behind the scenes, a power which relishes human destruction and human division.


865 posted on 06/17/2005 6:54:03 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: Gondring

Such sarcasm is shamefully unseemly. I'm taken aback that you would do such a thing.


866 posted on 06/17/2005 6:57:50 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: malakhi

"What MS and the corroborating witnesses told the court was not hearsay." Following your own examples, what an amazing, bold act of dissembling! You are so adept!


867 posted on 06/17/2005 7:00:53 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: MHGinTN
Such sarcasm is shamefully unseemly. I'm taken aback that you would do such a thing.

Boldly making up facts and running around with raging contradictions are also unseemly displays. Obviously logic isn't getting through, and so I must resort to something that highlights the absurdity of the these claims.

I thought these AIDES (Sauer-Iyers and Law were not NURSES) were wonderful and gave great care, just like Wolfson said. Now here's a claim they didn't. Which is it? They can't have it both ways.

868 posted on 06/17/2005 7:34:38 PM PDT by Gondring (The can have my Bill of Rights when they pry it from my cold dead hands.)
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To: MHGinTN
Still traveling, but thank you very much, backhoe, for the champiob effort. I'll post the link sometime this weekend, when I get my home computer put together again. [Moving is such a headache!]

Sympathize- don't ever want to move again!

869 posted on 06/17/2005 11:25:29 PM PDT by backhoe (-30-)
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To: floriduh voter; Lesforlife; MHGinTN; cyn; tutstar; 8mmMauser; Sun; Halls; Saundra Duffy

Terri Schiavo: Bobby Schindler on His Sister's Starvation, Autopsy

LifeNews.com
June 17, 2005

Minneapolis, MN (LifeNews.com) -- Bobby Schindler sat down with LifeNews.com to discuss his sister Terri Schiavo's starvation death and the autopsy report released on Wednesday. Bobby disputed the results of the autopsy and said the media's presentation of the debate surrounding Terri showed its bias and support for euthanasia.
"It's important that they promote this euthanasia agenda," Bobby said of the media coverage. "If you look at the way they handled my sister's case, they justified killing her."

The media's bias is "evidence of where we've come as a society - that we're perfectly okay defining someone as profoundly brain damaged and killing that person. We're starving people to death for the simple reason that they are brain damaged. Where is the compassion in that?"

Schindler told LifeNews.com that the autopsy raised more questions than it answered.

"It places more suspicion on Michael Schiavo than before," he said. "We've seen this for a long time now - everyone is concerned about Terri' condition and killing her because she not longer has any value for society, but they don't care what put her there in the first place."

Instead of praising Terri's estranged husband "for having the courage to kill his wife," Bobby said the public should be asking "some serious questions about what is going on here - he is the only one that knows what happened."

Governor Jeb Bush of Florida has asked a prosecutor to investigate the circumstances surrounding Terri's collapse. However, local investigators should have taken up an investigation back in 1990, Bobby said.

"Because she didn't die, it wasn't worth looking into," Schindler told LifeNews.com. "There were no thorough investigations at all at that time. Everyone assumed there was no foul play."

Though media reports say the autopsy confirms that Terri did not collapse as a result of physical abuse from Michael, Bobby disputes that contention.

"I don't think that provides conclusive evidence that nothing [problematic] happened to Terri that night," Schindler told LifeNews.com.

Bobby said the way Michael treated Terri after the collapse was cruel and inhumane.

"It's completely forgotten that he provided her no rehabilitative treatment and didn't take her outside for five years," he explained. "There was no interaction or medical treatment and he purposefully left our family out of the loop on receiving medical information. He treated her and by family worse than horrible - it was unconscionable."

"I'd like to see Michael answer some questions about her collapse, but he never will unless there is an investigation," he said.

Schindler told LifeNews.com he wasn't surprised that George Felos, the lead attorney for Michael, is a leading euthanasia advocate. He worries the media bought their representation of Terri's story.

"They lie about her condition and dehumanize people as much as they can. They lie about the manner in which they die and they know this is a barbaric way to kill someone," he said.

Terri's brother said he disagree with her autopsy report claiming that she was blind. He noted that the report did not say when Terri became blind and speculated that it could have happened during the thirteen days during which she was starved and dehydrated.

"It seems Terri was clearly recognizing us when we would get in front of her," Schindler said.

One of the unanswered questions of late has been whether Michael has buried the cremated remains of Terri's body or done something else with them. Michael is legally obligated to tell the Schindler family when and where he buries Terri's remains.

"I'm not going to speculate [on what Michael's done]," Bobby said. "It's just another sign of Michael trying to show he's in control and he's going to call the shots. We're going to have to play by his rules."

Schindler told LifeNews.com that he and his family will continue to speak out for the disabled and use their foundation for Terri to help other families that face similar circumstances. He also indicated the Schindler family may write a book at some point about their experiences.

Bobby Schindler spoke about the trials and struggles he and his family have faced throughout the legal battle to save his sister.

"It's been tough," he told LifeNews.com. "You need to have faith in God and Christ because if you don't you're going to be steering without a rudder."

"There is so much evil in this world. If you don't put your faith in God, then at the end if can really consume you."

http://www.lifenews.com/bio1036.html


870 posted on 06/18/2005 2:19:29 AM PDT by amdgmary (Please visit www.terrisfight.org and www.theempirejournal.com)
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To: amdgmary

Bobby and his family are such strong people. I have faith in God, but I can't tell you I'd be this strong. I have let anxiety and hurt consume me before and the result wasn't pretty. I am so amazed to see the Schindlers hold it all together after what they have gone through. However, I am sure in their private moments it has been harder on them than I can imagine. I am just so impressed with their strength and pray for them that they endure even more hard times in the future. God will surely bless them for it.


871 posted on 06/18/2005 7:44:56 AM PDT by Halls
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To: Halls; floriduh voter

Schiavo autopsy an Orwellian masterpiece

June 18, 2005

By Troy Newman
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

George Orwell once wrote, "If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." The recent release of the Pinellas County autopsy of Terri Schiavo is a clear and convincing example of Orwell's assertion. The national thought and language has been overtaken by a Big Brother of sorts – the mainstream media, who is now "thinking our thoughts" and compelling us into their world of "doublethink."

Written using technical medical terminology, which is lost on most, the 39-page tome announced that the certified manner of death is "undetermined," and the cause of Terri's untimely departure from this earthly life was "Complications of Anoxic Encephalopathy," or, in layman's terms, a brain injury from lack of oxygen. The report continues to explain that because no one really knows what caused the episode 15 years ago that resulted in Terri's injury, her manner of death remains uncertain.

It is now official. Nobody really knows why Terri died.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember the ebb and flow Terri's riveting end-of-life struggle being reported internationally for weeks. There were highly published efforts by her family to prevent her court-orderd death by dehydration that involved the United States Congress, the president, the Florida Legislature, the Florida governor and an unprecedented number of courts. Even her final moments on this mortal coil were callously reported live as if it was the last two minutes of the Super Bowl. Billions of people all over the globe were morbidly transfixed on their television sets watching and waiting for Terri to slowly die after being deprived of nourishment and hydration.

Now the chief medical examiner of Pasco and Pinellas Counties, Dr. Jon R. Thogmartin, claims we really can't know how she died.

While Terri lay disabled and unable to speak, her caregivers were verbally spinning the account of her tortured, lingering death into a compassionate health-care fairytale. Terri's estranged husband, Michael, repeatedly told us that his wife "had died 15 years earlier." How many times did we hear the medical "experts" tell us that her cerebral cortex had "liquefied" or that Terri was in a PVS, a persistent vegetative state?

The autopsy was meant to confirm everything the death-peddling pundits have told us, and with such great authenticity and certainty that no one would dare question its findings. But it hasn't worked out that way.

The questions raised by the absurd declaration that the manner of death cannot be determined makes me wonder if Dr. Thogmartin is a student of the famous science fiction author George Orwell. In Orwell's masterpiece work "1984," he describes a society manipulated through the use of a deceptive propaganda tool known as New Speak. This tool, where the language was perverted to mean whatever the authorities wanted it to mean, produced "doublethink" in a malleable society. Doublethink is "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."

It is evident that a form of New Speak has been employed the case of Terri Schiavo. We have been told that we must accept the "fact" that Terri actually died during her 1991 "accident" and that she was being "artificially kept alive" in spite of the fact that her body was "shutting down." But, in a momentary lapse in Schiavo New Speak, Dr. Thogmartin states that Terri was "a relatively health woman who could have easily survived another 10 or 15 years." Are both true?

It seems as though Dr. Thogmartion and his cohort medical examiners are creating a third class of human – the living dead. There are those of us who are alive, those who are dead, and now thanks to the Orwellian Thought Police, we have those, like Terri, who are somewhere in between life and death, hovering in a zombie-like existence.

We have been force-fed the concept that it was benevolent to deprive Terri of basic sustenance, yet our minds tell us it was sadistic. We are being trained to think, in classic Orwellian fashion, that bad is good in a diabolical attempt to justify the killing of the infirmed, disabled or otherwise imperfect people among us.

Today, because of the pro-death spin doctors corrupting our concepts of truth and morality, our society consented to the murder of Terri Schiavo. Tomorrow? Well, that is a future that even Orwell would not want to consider.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44855


872 posted on 06/18/2005 10:19:19 AM PDT by amdgmary (Please visit www.terrisfight.org and www.theempirejournal.com)
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To: fooman

The fix is in. After putting Terri to death, the authorities CANNOT be wrong.


873 posted on 06/18/2005 10:23:02 AM PDT by TAdams8591 (Terri Schindler wasn't in PVS, justice was!!!!!)
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To: veronica

Official cause of death should be DEHYDRATION not "complications of anoxic encephalopathy."


874 posted on 06/18/2005 10:25:31 AM PDT by TAdams8591 (Terri Schindler wasn't in PVS, justice was!!!!!)
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To: TAdams8591

When i read the autopsy it said the cause of death was deydration and the manner of death was unknown. Am I wrong? Also, I don't understand the whole manner of death thing. I think it is stupid!


875 posted on 06/18/2005 10:29:42 AM PDT by Halls
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To: Halls

The official cause of death will be listed as "complications of anoxic encephalopathy."


876 posted on 06/18/2005 11:01:55 AM PDT by TAdams8591 (Terri Schindler wasn't in PVS, justice was!!!!!)
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To: TAdams8591

Well, that is just rediculous. Any genious can figure out she died of severe deydration!


877 posted on 06/18/2005 11:09:56 AM PDT by Halls
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To: Mrs Mark

Do you want my business card? I am accusing Michael of hurting Terri badly enough that she almost died, but she in fact didn't die. So how can I be accusing him of murder? She had a very strong will to live, proven time and time again. MIchael didn't murder her -- the court of Judge Greer did that, Mrs. Mark.


878 posted on 07/15/2005 12:41:42 PM PDT by Sioux-san
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To: daylate-dollarshort

I don't see how you come to your conclusion that the Judge is exonerated by virtue of the autopsy report. No one disputed that Terri was severely brain damaged. But if she was just a cabbage, why the morphine suppositories to quell her pain while they were dehydrating her to death? She didn't deserve to die like that just so Michael could go have a church wedding.


879 posted on 07/15/2005 12:49:22 PM PDT by Sioux-san
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