Terri Schiavo Autopsy Could Answer Abuse Questions, Not PVS

Pinellas Park, FL (LifeNews.com) -- While Terri Schiavo clings to life and her parents hope and pray for a last-minute miracle to stop her painful starvation death, questions are looming as to what will happen if she dies. Now that her estranged husband Michael has agreed to an autopsy, Terri's family wonders if that will shed light on Terri's condition now or what happened when she collapsed in 1990.

An autopsy would not likely help resolve the debate over whether Terri's condition is a persistent vegetative state or if, as some neurologists and doctors suggest, she is minimally conscious and able to interact on a limited basis.

"Persistent vegetative state or minimally conscious state is a clinical diagnosis," Michael De Georgia, head of the neurology/neurosurgery intensive care unit at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, says. "It cannot be confirmed by autopsy."

George Felos, the euthanasia advocate who is Michael's lead attorney, told reporters that Michael switched his position on the autopsy in part to be able to prove his contention that Terri is PVS.

Yet, according to a Medpage report, Harvard neuropathologist E. Tessa Hedley Whyte said the brain "can't tell if there is a persistent vegetative state or not."

"The autopsy will show damage -- probably mostly scarring now -- and that damage will most likely correspond to some extent to what was seen on images," Whyte said.

Though the autopsy will confirm that Terri is severely mentally disabled as a result of her collapse and the deprivation of oxygen to her brain, Dr. De Georgia warns of reading too much into it and concluding that it shows Terri was a PVS patient.

"[T]here is no standard cutoff that says if you lose this many brain cells you are in a persistent vegetative state," he told Medpage.

Michael Williams, an associate medical professor at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, adds that "pathology alone cannot prove or disprove a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state."

What the autopsy could do, however, is help determine whether Michael abused Terri, leading to her collapse.

A bone scan conducted a year after the collapse showed signs of possible trauma and broken bones.

Dr. Michael Baden, chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police, told the Associated Press that autopsies can detect whether an adult's bones had ever been broken and healed, even years ago.

Baden told AP that the autopsy couldn't detect when the bones were broke but could confirm they broke at some time.

Some neurologists and a group of 30 doctors submitted briefs on Terri Schiavo's behalf last week contending that Terri is in a minimally conscious state and is able to respond to interaction with her family members and friends who visit her.

They say Terri would be able to make a partial recovery from her condition if Michael would provide her the appropriate level of medical care and rehabilitative therapy he has denied her since the early 1990s.

Subhuman Pinellas County Florida Judgenfuhrer Greer: "She could get up and speak. I don't care.
Don't you get it? I get off on the suffering of innocents.
Attorney Felos gets off on it, too, and our god who instructed him,
"You are more powerful than you realize.(*)
Imagine that. I get to to kill and serve our god at the same time
with a stroke of my pen and flash of my cool black-Mullah robes."

(*) pg 182, George Felos's book, "Litigation as Spiritual Practice" (Blue Dolphin Publishing, 2002)

" 9. Between September 1939 and April 1945 the defendants Karl Brandt, Blome, Brack, and Hoven unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed war crimes, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the execution of the so-called "euthanasia" program of the German Reich in the course of which the defendants herein murdered hundreds of thousands of human beings, including nationals of German-occupied countries. This program involved the systematic and secret execution of the aged, insane, incurably ill, of deformed children, and other persons, by gas, lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums. Such persons were regarded as "useless eaters" and a burden to the German war machine. The relatives of these victims were informed that they died from natural causes, such as heart failure. German doctors involved in the "euthanasia" program were also sent to Eastern occupied countries to assist in the mass extermination of Jews."

[ Count 2, section 9, of the indictment in "the Doctor's Trial" at the Nuremberg war crimes trial;
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ]

HEALTHFUL DRINKS WITH WARM MEALS SINCE THE ORDER-TO-MURDER-AN-INVALID BY JUDGE GREER
Scumbag Torturer and Murderer-At-Will Pinellas County Judgenfuhrer Greer ..... 55
..................................................................... Terri Shiavo 0
...................................................................... Lee Malvo 48
................................................................. Scott Peterson 47

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