And the spin and the smears continues unabated:
Pinellas County Medical Examiner Jon R. Thogmartin will hold a press conference on the autopsy report at 11:00 AM Wednesday.
What the report will conclude is not yet known, but the Schindler family and many supporters of Terri’s right to live hope the autopsy will provide clues regarding the cause of the cardiac arrest which led to her anoxic brain injury in 1990. They also hope that the autopsy will provide evidence of the abuse of which they have accused Michael Schiavo.
I am not terribly optimistic that the autopsy will provide evidence of either the cause of Terri’s cardiac arrest or any abuse. I think there was simply too much time between Terri’s injury(ies) and her death for any such evidence to still be detectable.
Of course, in the wingnuttia that is the Blogs For Terri playground, no evidence that Terri was abused does not mean that she wasn’t abused- it just means Michael Schiavo got away with murder. You can almost see the fund-raising letters write themselves.
And the spin of the results has already been written:
What I am most interested to see is whether or not, as Michael Schiavo and his attorney George Felos hope, the M.E. purports to draw any conclusions regarding whether Terri was in a PVS (Persistent Vegetative State).
As many readers will recall, when George Felos announced that Michael would “permit” an autopsy (the matter was later shown to be completely out of his hands), he said that Michael wanted “definitive proof showing the extent of her brain damage”…
Of course, as I pointed out back then, an autopsy cannot possibly “prove” whether Terri was PVS or not. Indeed, Dr. Bernardine Healy, a former Director of the National Institutes of Health and medical columnist for U.S. News & World Report, responded to Felos’ announcement, in an appearance on MSNBC, by pointing out that an autopsy can tell us nothing about Terri’s neurological function. She lamented the surreal reasoning by which Michael would permit an autopsy when Terri was dead, but refused the medical tests that could assess Terri’s brain function while she was still alive.
Of course an autopsy can’t diagnose a Persistent Vegetative State- that is a clinical diagnosis. But an autopsy can show the extent of the brain trauma and show that the physical damage is consistent with the clinical diagnosis. Which it did. Terri Schiavo was in far worse shape than Karen Anne Quinlan. Terri Schiavo was in a Persistent Vegetative State. Terri Schiavo was, but for a heartbeat, dead.
Listen to the spin from the commenters:
“The results that are reported on the autopsy report are baloney!!! Of course they’re going to say that. I wonder if we’ll ever know the real truth. I was very passionate about this when this was going on before she died and just cannot get myself emotionally involved like that again. Too upsetting. I have no faith in our government anymore at all.”
“I have to say that the autopsy isn’t going to show what we think.. it’s been too long. As for her brain being 1/2 the size of a ‘normal’ brain, that is due to the horrid dehydration they put her through. It’s common knowledge that organs shrivel up without hydration. But of course, those jerks, won’t tell us that…. *sigh*”
And thus, the fiction that Terri Schiavo was a thinking, feeling, conscious human being will continue on, and Michael Schiavo will be public enemy number one in the abortion/right to life community. Go read the folks at Pro Life Blogs as they continue to savage Michael Schiavo.
They have no shame, and Sully has it exactly right:
THEY LIED: In her final days, Terri Schiavo was blind and her brain was about half its expected size. She wasn’t in a PVS? Please. Bill Frist needs to acknowledge his reckless political opportunism at the time. The attempts of the fringe, theocon right to allege that her husband abused her have also been exposed as malicious falsehoods. Remember the lies that were told, the junk science that the theocons came up with, the endless slanders and misrepresentations? It’s rare that we get an objective resolution of a fiercely disputed matter. We have now. And it ain’t pretty.
That is what is going to drive me certifiably insane (or, if you will, drive me into a Sullivanesque hysteria)- the fact that this is so clearly and objectively resolved. The pathological findings, when coupled with the clinical disagnosis, settle this matter beyond any reasonable doubt, and, as far as I am concerned and as Andrew noted, to a level of certainty that is very rare. But the wingnuts will still trudge on, smearing everyone who dares challenge their nonsense.
In a just world, Frist and those who helped to orchestrate this freak-show circus would suffer politically. I don’t know if they will, but they lost me. Check my archives- I was far more willing to toe the company line until Schiavo. I was fiercely partisan (although I always tried to speak up when I thought Democrats were being smeared unfairly, hell, I defended Kerry and Kos and got raked over the coals for it), and still, for whatever reaason, maintain a residual level of partisanship. But I have most certainly soured on the taste of the kool-aid, and I sure look at everything the Republicans do with a much more skeptical eye than I did in the past.
I hope I am not alone.
*** Update ***
Shinobi
We live in a country where some people persist in the belief that the earth and all its creatures were created in 7 days by the hands of an almighty being and fact insist that their children not be brainwashed by the theory of evolution. Therefore is unsurprising to me that, some people will reject medical science when the conclusions reached are not what they wanted to hear.
michele
As soon as the report was released I waited for the resulting claims of bribery and lies to be blogged. Didn’t take long, did it?
andy
You’re not alone; we’ve been waiting for you to join us.
ed in texas
The problem here is you can’t prove a negative; you can only prove a positive. The only thing that could have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt would have happened if she had got up out of that bed and walked away. Anything less gets relegated to ‘might happen’. And monkeys might fly out…
Halffasthero
A Libertarian-style blogger is probably what the Democrat party needs in its mix. Dem’s seem reasonable, they just need a dose of fiscal sanity. I would hate to think how that might upset the balance of this blog if you bolted parties, however. I am speaking as a frequent visitor here, being purely selfish and hating the idea Rick and Stormy70 would take it personally and leave.
Just food for thought.
.
John Cole
I’m not a Democrat.
And where is Stormy?
John Cole
I’m not a Democrat.
And where is Stormy?
Tony Alva
You are NOT alone. The GOP will lose those of reason if things don’t change.
Glenn R
I live a fairly conservative life, but I sure wouldn’t want to associate myself with political conservatism.
bg
Stormy said she was vacating a few days ago. Presumably she isn’t back yet.
neil
But the wingnuts will still trudge on, smearing everyone who dares challenge their nonsense.
I would say this is the most succinct summary of American politics since 9/11 that I’ve ever read. Kudos.
Halffasthero
“I’m not a Democrat.
And where is Stormy?
Posted by John Cole at June 15, 2005 01:45 PM”
I never said you were a Democrat. I got the impression you were half thinking of bolting parties to which you would be a tough loss to the Repuplican cause. The biggest one of which is bringing sanity back to it.
And I have no idea where Stormy is.
Patterico
Okay, I’m ready to duck. I’m in hostile territory here . . .
I supported the federal law on Schiavo, but (despite the lies told by your commenter Richard Bennett) didn’t claim that Michael Schiavo had put Terri Schiavo in that condition.
I believe there are a lot of honorable, non-crazy people like me who supported the law.
Do you disagree? Or are we *all* just wingnuts in your eyes?
John Cole
No, It is not impossible for me to understand that there are some people who were honorable in their intentions.
However, the federal law was premised on a whole shitload of lies, and Michael Schiavo was viciously smeared and attacked by the same people who wrote the law and debated it on the floor of the house. Nothing honorable about that.
Not to mention that all of the specious claims that Terri Schaivo was misdiagnosed, or that she was not getting treatment, or that she could recover, or that she was not that baddly brain damaged, or that the conlcusions of the autopsy don’t really show anything and that we still can’t be ‘sure’ she was in a PVS.
That is just bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, more bullshit, and even more bullshit, and is not honorable in the least.
John Cole
I guess I could also add that all the people who were right about all the stuff I listed above were also villified by those who had your viewpoint- not necesarily you, but those whose side you were on.
Richard Bennett
No honorable person could have supported the Palm Sunday Overreach. It was the worst kind of political grandstanding, a cynical exercise that made a pro-lifer football out of Terri Schiavo. You may have plausibly wished the Florida law were different, but no rational person believed the Congressional action was appropriate.
And Paprika, you linked to Nat Hentoff’s columns claiming Micheal abused Terri; just because you let somebody else put the words in order doesn’t mean you didn’t endorse them.
Pug
“I live a fairly conservative life, but I sure wouldn’t want to associate myself with political conservatism.”
There’s millions of us out there.
If you think the government should have stayed out of this private mess, you “wanted Terri dead”. Just ask LaShawn Barber.
Ridiculous and pathetic is all I can say.
Ian
Hey, I am one of those who believes that the earth was created by a Supreme Being (though not in 7 days), and I was disgusted by the rantings and ravings of madmen regarding the Schiavo case. There are rational people on all sides of every debate. They’re just usually drowned out by whoever is screaming the loudest at the time…
Patterico
Bennett, I also linked to materials indicating that Schiavo had not abused her. When I linked to Hentoff’s column that raised the issue of whether there had been abuse, I made no comment, and I later expressly said at least twice that I was not making that argument. Yet on Dean Esmay’s blog you directly accused me of explicitly arguing that Schiavo had put her in that condition, a damn lie that you never retracted. So you can speculate all you like, because it makes you feel self-righteous and superior, but you have no evidence to back up what you say, and therefore reveal yourself as someone who goes around making irreponsible accusations about other people.
Credible people apologize and back off when proven wrong. A flaw in your personality keeps you from doing that. I bet you’ve never admitted you were wrong once in your adult life. You just strike me as one of those kind of guys.
I’m here to tell you it affects your credibility.
Keep digging that hole.