Posted on 04/12/2005 7:20:07 AM PDT by kcvl
Schiavo's 'Dr. Humane Death' Got 1980 Diagnosis Wrong By Jeff Johnson CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer April 12, 2005
(CNSNews.com) -- A neurologist hired by Michael Schiavo to confirm that his wife Terri was in a persistent vegetative state said he was "105 percent sure" of that diagnosis, but Dr. Ronald Cranford expressed similar certainty about a patient he examined in 1980 who later regained both consciousness and the ability to communicate.
Three days before Terri Schiavo's death, Cranford appeared on the MSNBC talk program, "Scarborough Country," to discuss her condition. Cranford was interviewed by reporter Lisa Daniels.
http://www.gopusa.com/news/2005/april/0412_schiavo_doctor1.shtml
HOORAY, someone finally posted my thinking. Organ donations are the entire reason we are dealing with issues regarding life-support (if you want to call it that). Many have paid the price for a few.
My contention is that the medical profession should evaluate the circumstances very carefully prior to attaching their so called life-support. Killing people who died naturally (without life-support) or would have died naturally (without life-support) at a later date for the sake of organs is not acceptible to me. And NO I do not believe organ donation is pro-life.
Death is when the heartbeat stops. Can't be anything else and to my knowledge there is no instrument in use that keeps the heartbeat beating. If we are able to believe life begins at conception when there are no brain waves how is it such a leap to believe life ends when the heart stops beating and the person cannot be revived in a minimal amount of time? Terri should not have been revived after 10 minutes and I wonder why she was if the intent was to kill her later.
I used to think my elder relatives were just talking through their hats when they'd say the country is going to heck in a handbasket--but they were right. However, it's accelerated lately. We're going to heck in a souped-up, turbo-charged handbasket. Someone's got to stop the momentum.
"Non-heart beating organ donation" and the "vegetative state"
Vegetative State – Persistent or Reversible?
Note: Some recovered after 20 years!
Is this next?
In a way, I feel that God was preparing me for the fight ahead. So far, on this forum, I have been accused of using hyperbole to make my case that we are on the same slippery slope that started the Holocaust, but the statements of doctors like Cranford are proof of the culture of death in our society that is gaining ground under the radar (see my post #23 for further research, the UK is now considering euthanasia for disabled infants). But if I am to be labeled a right-wing nutjob to save an innocent life, so be it. We can't let Terri's death be in vain, we must speak up against this evil now.
Hope she liked the what she got.
Terri ping! If anyone would like to be added to or removed from my Terri ping list, please let me know by FReepmail!
So, you're saying the doctor didn't update his skills over the intervening decade? My God, I hope this writer never made a mistake he might have learned from.
Cranford and his supporters are just into killing people, "for their own good."
I so appreciate your posts, and I won't call you a right-wing nutjob. I'm right there with you! People don't want to believe what they're seeing. Heck, I don't want to believe it either, but I can no longer hide my head in the sand. I can no longer be an ostrich who wants to hide from the problems I see. The problems are out there and they're real. Cranford and Felos are living proof.
You are 100% morally correct about that.
However, man's law sometimes makes the patient's cognitive "state," sadly, a tactical issue.
I'm not a Florida lawyer (nor any kind of lawyer), but I believe I read that Florida law makes a distinction between patients in a "persistent vegetative state" and patients in a "minimally conscious" state.
As I understand it, Florida legislators have made it lawful to starve/dehydrate to the former to death, but not the latter. Hence the desperate attempts to get the court to recognize opinions that Terri Schiavo was not "PVS."
The proved fact that doctors cannot reliably distinguish between "PVS" and "minimally conscious state" seems to have made little impact on Florida lawmakers.
ping
And his association with the Euthanasia Society, now called " Partnership in Caring", also included membership of mary labyak, administrator of hospice where Terri resided, and membership of george felos, a frequent speaker of the American Hemlock Society.
Would you just not LOVE to have one of your loved ones held in a hospice, in a NON Terminally ill state, yet disabled, and have mary labyak and george felos CONTROLLING his or her RIGHT TO LIFE?
The Schindler's faced this every day for the last FIVE YEATRS. Imagine if Terri were your child.
Combing felos and labyak with a monster guardian, 'Michael Schiavo the Cruel', Mr. 666 himself, and you have a recipe for euthanasia. These sick souls were backed by the ACLU, the george soros 'death in America' project and other very well financed groups....is it any WONDER that the Schindler's had a battle no regular American family could possibly battle effectively?
Cranford wrote an article in 1997 that is quoted in above posts, published in the op-ed of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, wherein he calls for NO FEEDING or WATERING of those with late stage ALZHIEMERS or MENTAL DISORDERS that show, IN HIS OPINION, no hope of progression towards normality.
He is a monster.
His testimony regarding Terri was NOT QUESTIONED by judge greer, but rather USED to break a TIE between three doctors used by the monster and three used by the Schindlers.
This physician, dr. cranford, would have BEEN WELL RECEIVED back in Germany in the 1930's wherein the Weimer Republic was SUCCESSFUL in getting the public to see the disabled and very sick as BURDONS who needed the mercy of DEATH~ It all began there....moved onto the homeless and infirm not institutionalized, to the homosexuals and the political opponents ending with the death decree to the Jews during hitler's reign....because the Jews were seen as an inferior race.
dr. cranford, Doctor Death, the amazing creep who believes that HE is right in putting the 'QUALITY of LIFE' over the 'SANCTITY of LIFE', mentions in his op-ed article, that societys MUST consider the expense of keeping the very ill and disable alive through food and water....he is a monster. A ghoul. And terrifically sick.
Florida case law does not even require a finding of PVS. Only a finding of incompetence.
Browning was 86 and a stroke victim. She did have a written advance directive. The patient was not PVS and was not terminal. Florida court system held that starving her to death was legal. Note the decision dates to 1990, before the Florida statute was changed so that the definition of "life-prolonging procedure" was expanded to specifically include "artificially provided sustenance and hydration."Supreme Court of Florida.
In re GUARDIANSHIP OF Estelle M. BROWNING.
STATE of Florida, Petitioner,
v.
Doris F. HERBERT, etc., Respondent.No. 74174.
Sept. 13, 1990.
BARKETT, Justice.
We have for review In re Guardianship of Browning, 543 So.2d 258 (Fla. 2d DCA 1989), in which the district court certified the following question as one of great public importance:
Whether the guardian of a patient who is incompetent but not in a permanent vegetative state and who suffers from an incurable, but not terminal condition, may exercise the patient's right of self-determination to forego sustenance provided artificially by a nasogastric tube?
Id. at 274. [FN1] We answer the question in the affirmative as qualified in this opinion.
FN1. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, 3(b)(4), Fla. Const. Estelle Browning died on July 16, 1989, at the age of 89. Although the claim is moot, we accept jurisdiction because the issue raised is of great public importance and likely to recur. In re T.W., 551 So.2d 1186, 1189 (Fla.1989); Holly v. Auld, 450 So.2d 217, 218 n. 1 (Fla.1984).
I. THE FACTS
On November 19, 1985, a competent Estelle Browning executed a declaration that provides, in part:
If at any time I should have a terminal condition and if my attending physician has determined that there can be no recovery from such condition and that my death is imminent, I direct that life-prolonging procedures be withheld or withdrawn when the application of such procedures would serve only to prolong artificially the process of dying.
In addition, Mrs. Browning stipulated that she desired not to have "nutrition and hydration (food and water) provided by gastric tube or intravenously." [FN2]
FN2. The entire form is reproduced in the appendix of the district court's opinion. In re Guardianship of Browning, 543 So.2d 258, 275 (Fla. 2d DCA 1989).
At eighty-six years of age, Mrs. Browning suffered a stroke.
...
The consensus of the medical evidence indicated that the brain damage caused by the hemorrhage was major and permanent and that there was virtually no chance of recovery. Death would occur within seven to ten days were the nasogastric feeding tube removed. However, Mrs. Browning's life could have been prolonged up to one year as long as she was maintained on the feeding tube and assuming the absence of infection.
Chapter 765, Florida Statutes 2004 <-- 765.101(10)
Note also the recitiations in Browning's living will. These were construed by the Florida District Court of Appeals in such a way as to find that Browning was legally terminal. That a scheduled natural death by dehydration, under the fact circumstances of the case, was what Browning wanted, and was therefore legal.
This is also the case that lays the groundwork for the assertion that Michael somehow did the blood family a favor, by following the "more strenuous" legal course before starving Terri to death. The alternative, less strenuous course, is to starve her to death with no permission required from the court.
These death mongers are always talking out both sides of their butts.
They insist the Terri Schiavo case was unique and private, but they point out that there are thousands more just like her to deal with.
They brag about the thousands of patients they want to kill because they are deemed to be life unworthy of life, but they get offended if you compare them to Nazis.
Some of them appear on these threads, telling us we have no influence and might as well give it up, then they blame us for discouraging families from offing their loved ones.
They deride us for claiming we're on a slippery slope, then they say we need to step up the pace to deal with the increasing number of people who should be killed.
Their final contradiction will come when it's their turn to die, and they gasp for every breath they can get.
If, organ donations are the cause of this terrible movement we are in an unsolvable position. When life and death cannot be defined and continues to evolve because of the influence of a few organizations I believe we are in a hopeless situation. Apparently, political affiliation does not seem to matter as our elected officials have let the minority rule.
Guess I'm a right wing nut as well since I too have been concerned that our 'culture of death' is heading down that slippery slope that resulted in the killing of so many by the Nazis.
Please read this article for another perspective on the issue................Julie
Am I On Life Support?
By Lawrence Henry
Published 4/1/2005 12:07:37 AM
The American Spectator (www.spectator.org)
Call me sensitive about such things.
Back in the '90s, when my wife and I belonged to a Boston tennis club, we got together with the rest of the membership for a round-robin mixed doubles tournament and brunch. Lovely occasion, lots of fun, and as we sat around the table after playing and eating, the discussion turned to issues of the day, one of which was health care.
A young man across from me said, "I'm a surgeon, and I certainly think it's within bounds for me to refuse to provide my services to certain people. For example, smokers."
I was smoking an after-meal pipe.
"I have a kidney transplant," I said. "It's lasted thirteen years. It's given me a new life. I have a wife and a son. Would you deny me that chance if you were the transplant surgeon?"
The young man had the grace to withdraw his gambit, in an embarrassed way. It was clear to the whole table full of people -- without rancor, too; things were nicer ten years ago -- that confronting a real person was a whole different thing than talking about a medical abstraction.
YOU COULD MAKE THE ARGUMENT that I have been on life support for 30 years.
My native kidneys failed in 1975. I spent the next six years on hemodialysis, a process so ill understood by the general public even today that I should explain it.
Hemo (or "blood") dialysis, "the kidney machine" as most people half-comprehend it, removes blood from the body through one tube, connected to an artery, runs it through a filter, then returns it to the body through another tube, connected to a vein. The machine itself holds the filter, the pump, and the filtration fluid and circulating system, and routes the blood through the mechanism.
A patient spends three sessions a week on hemodialysis, each session lasting (then) four or five hours (nowadays, three). In between, he watches his diet carefully, far more carefully than any would-be weight-loser does, for a variety of nutrient contents and for overall fluid intake.
Dialysis might have been denied me back then, it was still so new and scarce. "If your kidneys had failed two or three years earlier," one of my doctor pals told me, "you would have been dead. We would have taken a look at you, single guy, drug abuser, rock and roll musician, and said, 'No way. We need these machines for parents with kids.'"
There are more than 80,000 people on dialysis in the U.S. at any one time. On life support?
EVERY YEAR, ABOUT A FIFTH of the people on dialysis get a kidney transplant, as I did in 1981. When a transplant works, it works spectacularly and instantly, as mine did. For 22 years, except for the pills I took and the doctor visits I made, I did not know there was anything different about me.
Of course there was. Suppose my supply of immunosuppressants had been interrupted by a political upheaval. Suppose prednisone had been banned by the FDA. Suppose I had found myself lost on a camping trip. This is not quite so far-fetched a hazard as it sounds. Humorist Lewis Grizzard died because his a transplanted pig valve in his heart got infected while he was in Russia, away from the care that he needed, and needed fast.
Nonetheless, you don't risk much if you don't presume to a globe-trotting lifestyle. Is this life support, however distantly? The transplant will fail some day, almost certainly. Without readily available, highly sophisticated medical intervention, a transplant recipient will die if something suddenly goes wrong. It definitely can.
THAT TWO-DECADE KIDNEY FAILED, and then another transplant failed in two years, and here I am again using hemodialysis. (I will transition in about a month to a form of home dialysis called peritoneal dialysis.) There are some pains and drawbacks associated with hemo, but you deal with more boredom than agony. But, take my word for it, dialysis makes you feel a whole lot better than you feel in late-stage renal failure.
As my second transplant failed this time, I came very near giving up. I did not realize –- really did not know until now -- how thoroughly sick I had gotten, over how long a period. My health had declined steadily for almost four years, nearly two at the end of the first transplant, and throughout the two years of the second transplant, which never really kicked in the way it should have.
So here I am in Terri Schiavo days, and you will forgive me if in this whole intense storm I feel a whole lot more like a target than an advocate. With every dialysis treatment, I feel better, and I am grateful to be restored to my family in better shape than I have been for a long time.
Am I on life support? I suppose I am. Long before the Schiavo case broke on the national scene, when I felt at my worst, as I thumbed through a file on my desk, I found the health-care proxy I had signed before my second transplant. A health-care proxy is of course not a living will. Nonetheless, moved by some impulse I did not then understand, I tore it up. I find myself quite reluctant to sign another.
I saw Cranford on several programs. He blinked his eyes a lot. Looked creepy. Too bad the media won't revisit the Terri extermination . . . or will they?
I just can't thank you enough for the links. I am so embarassed that I ever even THOUGHT I might have some thoughts about this subject. Little did I know that my idea of no heartbeat as being death was a boon to the organ transplant program. Silly me. Organ transplants need to outright outlawed in light of the potential abuse and complexities. How dare they make the recepient's life more valuable than the doner's life? I have multiple times said it is Frankenstein medicine and of that I am not embarassed.
ping
Know what I'd like to do? I'd like to make an appt. with Cranford (if he still takes patients), and when he comes into the room to examine me, say to him, "I've got something to show you." Then present him with a mirror with a picture of a demon on it, and tell him that "this is YOUR soul!" Then leave him standing there and walk out. Think it'd have any effect? Nah!!!! Just dreamin', I guess.
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