New Light Shed on the Schiavo Case
Published by the Washington Times on October 1, 2006
On March 31, 2005, Terri Schiavo died after her husband Michael Schiavo ordered her deprived her of food and water for 13 days, ending a bitter fight between her family and her husband that had divided America and reached the highest levels of our government.
As writer for the online journal or “blog,” The Razor, in 2003 I joined an effort called “Blogs for Terri” to help her parents Mary and Robert Schindler stop Michael from ending Terri’s life. For nearly two years I championed Terri’s right to life on the Internet, in letters to the editor and calls to politicians and journalists.
As an atheist and amateur scientist, I found myself in the company of the religious who supported the Schindlers for reasons of faith as they tried to save what they believed to be their daughter’s life. My lack of religious convictions, including a belief in an afterlife, did not deter me from what I still believe was an honorable endeavor that, in the end, became yet another grave injustice in the world.
Those of us who supported the Schindlers were stunned at the vehemence of Michael Schiavo’s supporters. Fellow writer and blogger Dean Esmay, who shares my views on this matter and joined “Blogs for Terri,” received abusive comments and e-mails calling him a coward for not disavowing the Schindler family after Terri’s autopsy report was released—a report some believed proved undeniably that Terri was brain-dead. Mr. Esmay writes that Michael Schiavo’s supporters felt vindicated by the report, and also felt it necessary that “Terry’s parents, siblings, and childhood friends needed to be denounced as 100 percent wrong, and Michael Schiavo had to be lauded as 100 percent right, period. To suggest anything to the contrary was simply evil. Or, at best, boneheaded: anti-science, anti-rational, anti-humanist, anti-everything-good.”
As a political commentator, I am used to being pilloried for my stances on controversial issues. However, the vicious attacks leveled at those of us who questioned the medical opinions on the Schiavo case, or Michael Schiavo’s motives, continue to puzzle me.
It is very likely Terri was brain-dead. If so, then what happened to her body would not matter to her. Therefore it didn’t matter if it was buried under ground, cremated (as indeed it was) or fed and cared for in a nursing home.
On the other hand, her parents believed she was not brain-dead but brain-damaged. That is an important distinction, since we as a society do not sanction the murder of “defectives” who fail to meet an arbitrary standard such as “quality of life.” Her family believed Terri’s rehabilitation was possible and that she could someday regain consciousness.
Given the finality of death, and the doubts raised by experts on both sides of the issue, I recognized there was sufficient uncertainty about her condition to warrant keeping her body alive.
The medical establishment, however, firmly sided with Michael Schiavo and his belief that Terri was beyond rehabilitation. So did the majority of Americans, according to public opinion polls taken at the time. The courts agreed, and Michael Schiavo was allowed to mercy-kill his wife.
A year and a half later, the medical establishment is again in the news—this time unable to explain why a commonly prescribed sleep medication, Zolpidem, known in the United States by the brand-name “Ambien,” has successfully awakened patients suffering similar persistent vegetative states as Terri Schiavo, according to a Sept. 12 article in Britain’s Guardian newspaper. The Guardian reports a family doctor in South Africa made the discovery when Louis Viljoen had laid in a deep coma for 5 years after being hit by a truck. He had begun involuntarily twitching, causing him to tear at the bed sheets, so a nurse suggested his doctor prescribe the young man a sedative. The doctor prescribed Zolpidem.
Twenty-five minutes later, after his mother had given him the crushed pill mixed in water, Louis opened his eyes and said “Hello, Mummy.” Today, seven years later, Louis Viljoen still takes a daily dose of Zolpidem and is recovering.
Doctors have no idea how the drug works, or why. All they know is that areas that appeared dead on brain scans show activity once the drug is taken. While most of the patients given the drug continue to display signs of brain damage, they are now able to communicate and move, suggesting further rehabilitation is possible.
It is quite likely Terri Schiavo would not have responded to Zolpidem given the 15 years she had been in her persistent vegetative state. However, there is a chance she would have—especially had the drug been administered earlier in her treatment. Unfortunately for Terri and her family, we will never know for sure.
For those of us who fought for Terri, the successful treatment of those in a persistent vegetative state using Zolpidem can only be compared to the discovery of evidence exonerating an executed man.
This revolutionary treatment should give pause to the majority of Americans who sanctioned the mercy-killing of Terri by her husband—aided and abetted by a legal system that refused to give an innocent woman the same thing it gives accused murderers: the benefit of the doubt.
SCOTT KIRWIN
A freelance writer who blogs at The Razor (therazor.org) and lives in Delaware.
Bill:
Just a correction.
You wrote:
“died after her husband Michael Schiavo ordered her deprived her of food and water for 13 days”
It was the probate court, not her husband who made that decision, after it was ordered to do so by the appellate court (2nd District Court of Appeal) at the end of the state appeals process.
1 October 2006, 6:37 pmScott Kirwin:
Bill
Right, but they were acting on behalf of Michael as her guardian.
Or not: I’m not a lawyer.
Point taken.
1 October 2006, 6:50 pmBobby Schindler:
Mr. Kirwin,
I read your column, New Light Shed on the Schiavo Case.
First, let me say how grateful I am for all of your past efforts supporting my sister Terri.
However, in your column your statement that my sister Terri was “very likely brain dead” is completely false.
I urge you to read the autopsy report (available on terrisfight.org) issued by the IME, Dr. Jon Thogmartin.
Without going all of the details of the autopsy, which continues to be misreported by the media incidentally, it was a foregone conclusion that Terri was not brain dead. It absolutely bewilders me how this claim continues to be made when there is not one doctor on record (this also includes Michael Schiavo’s doctors) as diagnosing Terri in this condition. Moreover was the fact that the IME made it clear that he was unable to conclude whether Terri was even in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) because PVS is a clinical diagnosis made only a living person and cannot be confirmed by autopsy.
Even more however, was the consulting doctor to the IME, Neuropathologist Dr. Stephen Nelson, unable to rule out that Terri could have been in a minimally conscience state (MCS), which is a higher level of consciousness then the PVS diagnosis. This is hardly the findings from someone that is brain dead.
More evidence of how the public has been misled is the complete failure to report that Terri’s frontal and temporal poles and insular-cortex demonstrated relative preservation. This meant that Terri’s cortex retained function and that her brain was more normal in the area that controls higher-level thinking.
I also recommend that you to read Dr. Sherry and Steven Eros thorough analysis of Terri’s autopsy (http://eroscoloredglasses.blogspot.com/2005/06/terri-schiavos-autopsy-blind-spot.html).
Here is what they concluded:
•By reference to the medical literature adduces evidence that a substantial portion of the loss in Terri’s brain weight observed postmortem may have been due to the dehydration to which she was subjected.
•By reference to the medical literature adduces evidence that Terri’s much-vaunted total cortical blindness may also be attributable to dehydration.
•Refutes the Medical Examiners’ suggestion that their autopsy findings are “very consistent with” the PVS diagnosis and for years Terri Schiavo was unable to see, recognize her family, think, or exercise any of the other higher mental functions that distinguish human life.
•Refutes the Medical Examiners’ suggestion that their autopsy findings prove that Terri Schiavo suffered irreversible brain damage and would not have benefited from rehabilitation.
•Critiques poor medical and scientific reasoning and misleading statements by the Medical Examiners who performed the autopsy, as well as by the mainstream media and medical experts who supported the Medical Examiners’ misinterpretation of the findings.
There are other doctors that have commented on Terri’s autopsy as well.
It does not surprise me lengths the mainstream media goes with their erroneous reporting in an attempt to justify what Michael Schiavo did to my sister. However, most disturbing is how most of the general public continues to believe what the popular media writes regarding so many aspects of Terri’s case without researching or even questioning its accuracy.
Sincerely,
2 October 2006, 10:05 amBobby Schindler
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation
5562 Central Avenue, Suite 2
St. Petersburg, FL 33707
727-490-7603
http://www.terrisfight.org
Administrator:
Bobby
First let me just state how sorry I am for your loss. Also, please accept my apologies for my erroneous statement about your sister’s condition.
It’s easy to fall prey to Media Myths. Being a critic of such things, I should have known better.
Scott Kirwin
2 October 2006, 10:24 amDean's World:
New Light Shed on the Schiavo Case
From the Washington Times:
Fellow writer and blogger Dean Esmay, who shares my views on this matter and joined “Blogs for Terr…
2 October 2006, 10:27 amBobby Schindler:
Mr. Kirwin,
I appreciate your response. If you have any questions now or in the future, please feel free to contact me.
Sincerely,
2 October 2006, 11:16 amBobby Schindler
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation
5562 Central Avenue, Suite 2
St. Petersburg, FL 33707
727-490-7603
http://www.terrisfight.org
plunge:
Good grief. You have a real persecution complex. People that disagreed with the Schindlers recieved just as much hate mail and got called all sorts of charged names and even death threats. Trying to make your side out to be a bunch of calm, considerate martyrs would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathological.
2 October 2006, 12:10 pmAdministrator:
Plunge
2 October 2006, 1:05 pmMartyrdom isn’t my style. I’m a student of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Vince Lombardi and believe that there is no reward to losing.
Ron Panzer, President Hospice Patients Alliance:
Mr. Kirwin,
First, I wish to thank you for being intellectually honest enough to apply the same considerations for people who are disabled as you would for able-bodied citizens.
You wrote, “we as a society do not sanction the murder of defectives.” That is exactly the point, and your statement is quite inaccurate. YOU do not sanction the murder of defectives. I do not sanction the murder of defectives, and the prolife community does not sanction the murder of those deemed “defective.”
However, the mainstream legal community, the mainstream medical community, the mainstream judicial community DOES sanction the murder of defectives. Anyone who has their “ear to the ground” listening for the hoofbeats of the approaching holocaust for the elderly, disabled and chronically ill, knows that they are already targeted, already victimized, and already being killed in large numbers.
The HIPAA regulations serve NOT to protect privacy, but to build a wall of secrecy, behind which patients are routinely being killed all over the USA. Patients are killed one-by-one, in private so that nobody can accurately collect data to see how many patients are being killed.
We at Hospice Patients Alliance receive complaints all the time from family members who report that their loved one was outright killed in a hospice, a hospital or nursing home. And these family members are often well-educated lawyers, doctors, teachers, and other professional people who understand how health care is supposed to work. They report they are lied to, manipulated, coerced and intimidated.
The euthanasia movement has infiltrated health care, and hospice as an industry has most conclusively been infiltrated. This is a well and easily documented fact! Now, back to the Schiavo case.
Most do not have a clue what the Schiavo case was all about: it was a pre-planned stepping stone, setting a legal precedent for the hastened deaths of NON-terminal patients within hospice through the use of removal of tube feedings and/or oral hydration, within the hospice setting. It was an in-your-face all out assault on the values you think are still existing within our society: the idea that our society does not kill the “defective.”
The proof that our society routinely kills the defective, or hastens the death of the terminal or chronically ill? Physicians were quoted in numerous newspaper articles as saying things like, “I don’t understand what all the fuss is about with this Schiavo case … decisions like this are made every day at our hospital … tube feedings are shut off every day in patients here, or there…”
What these physicians reveal, through their comments, is the routine practice of hastening death within the health care system. “Quality of life,” NOT sanctity of life, is now the determining factor for when a patient is to receive care or not receive care. And those behind the Schiavo killing, made sure a few years earlier, that there was legislation enacted which RE-defined food and water as “medical treatment” which could be withheld due to a physician’s order. Previously, food and water were always considered normal, basic services/care and was NOT within the control of the physician to withhold.
I hope that you visit our euthanasia issues discussion pages at:
http://www.hospicepatients.org/euth-center.html to learn how hospice has been infiltrated, how the main lobbying group for the hospice industry (the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization) is the surviving corporate entity that holds the legal and copyright rights from the Euthanasia Society of America (later called Choice in Dying, which merged with Partnership for Caring, which merged with Last Acts to become Last Acts Partnership, which was absorbed into the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization!).
People need to wake up and understand that when the “right to die” advocates speak about “Death with Dignity,” they are talking about deaths imposed upon those who are “unworthy of life,” (the “defectives” according to THEM). They sell their agenda by promoting the idea that people can control their own death, hastening death ONLY at their own desire, when they want to. The reality? Patients are killed without their permission or even knowledge.
In the Netherlands, the Remmelink Report from the early 1990s definitively showed that over 1,000 patients in that tiny country alone were killed each year involuntarily, without their permission. How many more patients are being killed every year in the USA!
The financial incentives to the state and federal governments, as well as to private insurance companies, is so huge that it would be illogical to not see that they are motivated to kill patients, thereby balancing their budgets (or increasing profit). When a patient is hastened to death, as Terri was, the government does not have to pay for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, and the budget is balanced more easily. When the patients can be killed without anyone knowing about it (due to HIPAA), the killing protocol is perfected, even more “perfect” than the ovens of Auschwitz!
To be elderly, to be disabled, to be chronically ill today is to be targeted, victimized, and yes, killed.
3 October 2006, 8:42 pmligneus:
Since I am now seventy, though in good health, this is just a little scary. More evidence of where the left’s brave new world leads. Though they scream at the mere suggestion of Nazism originating in the socialist side of the political spectrum, there is a link between what happened to Terri and the Nazi’s killing off the mentally defective in gas chambers.
4 October 2006, 5:42 amAnother of the left’s propaganda victories, that the Nazis were a right wing mob.
Administrator:
Mr. Panzer
I do not necessarily agree with your assertion that we are on a slippery slope. However I am happy to find that there are people around like you and your organization that believe we are, if only to raise the broader issues beyond euthanasia and the so-called “Right to die” movement.
Yesterday my wife, a physician, treated an 88 year old man who attempted suicide. He had outlived his wife and his son, and felt that he was now unwanted and unloved in our society.
He was healthy, but he was very lonely.
Here was a man who had witnessed so much. He had flown fighter planes in World War 2, been a hero in the service of his nation.
Yet he was unloved. Forgotten. I broke down crying upon hearing this.
This is the true crime: the low esteem we hold our youngest and oldest members of society in. Both children and the elderly are viewed as non-productive and therefore a burden on our society.
Euthanasia is the easy way out for our society. We clothe the term with statements like “death with dignity” and other euphemisms all designed to make us feel better.Like abortion, euthanasia becomes a way for us to avoid facing our own ruthlessness, our own failures, and our own core selfishness as a society.
Death is easy: living is hard, especially when that living means treating the young and old with the respect and honor each deserves.
4 October 2006, 1:06 pmTsutsugamushi:
Dear sir,
I just read your article and the response to it. I cannot help but think that this is based upon a lack of knowledge and a lack of empathy.
1 Regarding Terri Schiavo, it is clear that among the medical community consensus was that her condition was irreversible. Although one might argue about her not being brainddead, such does not preclude the possibility of severe braindamage incompatible with cognitive functions. Which is exactly what physicians said she was suffering from. Although I welcome any civil debate I would like to point out that those more likely to have sufficient knowledge to adequately discuss the subject tend to be physicians.
2 As a general thought I would like to suggest that there are situations in which medical treatment is futile. I won’t list all the possible dilemmas but suffice it to say that confronted with any situation that cannot be remedied by medical intervention the question needs to be asked: must we start/continue such therapy when it has no effect on the outcome of the condition?
3 With the previous point in mind one might be confronted with a patient that decides for him/herself that treatment is unwanted. Following that the patient might also argue that the current situation causes to much suffering and as such he/she requests that her physician ends that suffering: i.e. euthenasia. Again, one might have a different point of view, but it is clear there are patients who do ask that question. To suggest that euthanasia is merely another form of murdering the old and disabled is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. More to the point, this horrid analogy is the exact opposite of what euthanasia stands for.
Sincerely
19 October 2006, 4:45 amAdministrator:
Tsutsugamushi
Lack of knowledge and empathy? Those are rather serious charges that I believe you make a bit too hastily.
You make the same mistakes everyone does with this case, namely, thinking “What would I want done to me if I was in Terri’s condition?” This emotional response ignores the unique facts of Terri’s case.
1. The “medical consensus” which you speak of is a myth. The Schindler family had the backing of numerous physicians in this case, many of whom were prepared to testify on their behalf. However they were not allowed to do so due to the legality upon which this case hinged: namely, the person entitled to guardianship of Terri.
Because American law favors the married spouse in cases such as this, the Schindlers – or their doctors – were never allowed unfettered access to their daughter.
2. Agreed. I am not against the withdrawal of care, nor or most of the supporters of the Schindlers – contrary to what the Media and Michael Schiavo would have you believe. This is a “straw man” invented by Schiavo’s supporters to make those of us who support the Schindlers out to be irrational religious zealots.
I believe that in this case, of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, there was still a reasonable doubt about Terri’s prognosis AND her wishes. In the United States, criminals can only be sentenced to death if a jury of 12 people UNANIMOUSLY agree that the person is guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Had Terri’s life been presented in a such a venue, I have no doubt that she would be alive today.
3. My point regarding euthanasia above is that it is a matter of life or death and should be treated as such. This means that we must consider the unique circumstances of each case – something that again has been ignored by the media. Terri’s wishes remain unknown, and those of her family were ignored.
Terri’s fate was decided by one man – Michael Schiavo. His behavior throughout his wife’s illness was not honorable – taking up with another woman and siring a child with her while his wife lay in a hospital bed. Either he should have divorced Terri, or he should have remained faithful to his wife regardless of her condition. “In sickness and in health,” is a vow that he took when he married Terri and later broke.
19 October 2006, 6:24 amAmazed:
“The Schindler family had the backing of numerous physicians in this case, many of whom were prepared to testify on their behalf.”—-
Testify to what? That they had never actually examined the patient? That they had never actually reviewed her medical records?
Getting Hammesfahr back into court and under oath on the Sciavo case probably would have just embarrassed him further, after all the first time the Schindlers managed to get his testimony heard he was forced to admit he had never had any documented or provable success with his “treatments”.
The Schindler family had a fistful of affadavits- as I recall ONE doctor on that list had actually examined Mrs Schiavo and reviewed even a single page of her medical history.
The remainder of the doctors listed:
1. had not examined Mrs Schiavo
2. had not reviewed even ONE page of her medical record
3.did not know any of the details of her medical history
4.Did not know the history of her prior treatment
5.Could not tell you what medications had ever been prescribed for her or what dosage
6. had viewed the carefully selected moments of video torn out of context from the many hours of video recorded.
7. could not say when or where the video had been recorded, whether Mrs Schiavo had a fever on the day the recordings were made, what medications she had been given on those dates, who was in the room while those videos were made, what distractions might have existed, etc. etc.
These were not medical consultations. These doctors were not “reporting findings” after examining or testing a patient. They wrote in broad terms, painted the canvas with the widest brush imaginable using the broadest of strokes. In other words no insightful, artful, technically impressive medicine was being practiced. Generalizations and weasel wording.
Essentially they were just adding to the pro life noise about the case- helping to fuel the public confusion, adding more smoke to the smoke and mirrors show of the misleading video snippets.
They were trying to help the Schindlers, noble or not, by signing MD after a bunch of meaningless drivel that really didn’t contribute anything of value to the debate other than letting the public know that some doctors don’t always agree with a patients choice in refusing unwanted sugeries, or unwanted invasive, intrusive or experimental medical procedures and treatments.
Some doctors don’t agree with the family.
Some doctors don’t like to turn off the respirator or pull the tubes or order a stop to the medications.
5 December 2006, 11:45 pmAmazed:
One thing is certain- the debate is valuable.
Many well intentioned people came forward but their contributions were questionable. Some tried to lend credibility to the Schindlers and went too far- probably beleiving that the end justifies the means.
A particular nurse comes to mind. I think Greer was charitable in his comments on that issue.
Whatever truth there might have been to that nurses statements it was horribly overshadowed by one simple truth: no parent engaged in a life and death struggle to save their daughter and bring forward their best possible court case to do so is going to overlook or not remember that someone was calling them and telling them about suspicious or evil acts against their daughter.
I suppose it happens that you face a fork in the road and you can’t always see what direction a particular path will lead you. It seemed like the Schindlers would have done better if they hadn’t picked up so much baggage along the way. They were riding in a leaky ship and they had some passengers actually drilling holes in their boat.
6 December 2006, 12:33 am