POST MORTEM ON TERRI SCHIAVO
Recently an autopsy on Terri Schaivo showed irreversible brain damage, that she did not die of starvation, and there were no signs of abuse. Those facts are being used to give the impression that her defenders were wrong on the facts. But these are not the only facts of her case.
Of course she did not die of starvation: she died of thirst. That happens weeks before death from starvation, when someone is deprived of both water and food. Dehydration kills first.
The finding of no signs of abuse may have resulted because normal autopsies do not ordinarily include X-Rays. Claims of abuse arose from stories of friends of Terri, and also because almost an hour elapsed between her collapse and the phone call to ER. Most of all, they came from X-Rays taken 18 months after her collapse, showing healed fractures in many bones. She had never been known to have bone fractures before then, opening the possibility that the fractures resulted from a beating on the day of her collapse. Also, at least one MD who saw her noted that when she was admitted to the hospital, she had the kind of extremely stiff and rigid neck typical of someone who had been strangled - another possible cause of the lack of air that caused her brain damage. The fact that the autopsy showed no abuse did not show that there was no abuse.
The autopsy did not address at all the main issues of her case. As former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy writes today here, those questions were not answered by the autopsy. Today's short editorial in National Review Online sums up those unanswered issues here. Money quote below:
"About the main arguments against killing Terri Schiavo, the autopsy had nothing to say. Many people believed that it is wrong deliberately to bring about the death of innocent human beings, whatever their condition; that it is especially wrong when there is doubt about what that person wanted, and when her family members are willing to provide care for her; that Mr. Schiavo was too compromised to make this decision; that a law enabling the killing of people in a “persistent vegetative state” should not be stretched to cover people who might be “minimally conscious”; and that the Supreme Court should not have established the current lax standards for denying incapacitated people food and water. Nobody who believed these things has any reason to change his mind based on this week’s evidence. — The Editors"
We should not forget Terri. Her killing, and the reasons it disturbed a country so much, still needs to be addressed.
Of course she did not die of starvation: she died of thirst. That happens weeks before death from starvation, when someone is deprived of both water and food. Dehydration kills first.
The finding of no signs of abuse may have resulted because normal autopsies do not ordinarily include X-Rays. Claims of abuse arose from stories of friends of Terri, and also because almost an hour elapsed between her collapse and the phone call to ER. Most of all, they came from X-Rays taken 18 months after her collapse, showing healed fractures in many bones. She had never been known to have bone fractures before then, opening the possibility that the fractures resulted from a beating on the day of her collapse. Also, at least one MD who saw her noted that when she was admitted to the hospital, she had the kind of extremely stiff and rigid neck typical of someone who had been strangled - another possible cause of the lack of air that caused her brain damage. The fact that the autopsy showed no abuse did not show that there was no abuse.
The autopsy did not address at all the main issues of her case. As former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy writes today here, those questions were not answered by the autopsy. Today's short editorial in National Review Online sums up those unanswered issues here. Money quote below:
"About the main arguments against killing Terri Schiavo, the autopsy had nothing to say. Many people believed that it is wrong deliberately to bring about the death of innocent human beings, whatever their condition; that it is especially wrong when there is doubt about what that person wanted, and when her family members are willing to provide care for her; that Mr. Schiavo was too compromised to make this decision; that a law enabling the killing of people in a “persistent vegetative state” should not be stretched to cover people who might be “minimally conscious”; and that the Supreme Court should not have established the current lax standards for denying incapacitated people food and water. Nobody who believed these things has any reason to change his mind based on this week’s evidence. — The Editors"
We should not forget Terri. Her killing, and the reasons it disturbed a country so much, still needs to be addressed.
posted by Old Neocon at 11:35 AM
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