Posted on 05/28/2007 9:33:12 AM PDT by wagglebee
The Christian attorney who fought to keep Terry Schiavo alive says the three leading GOP presidential candidates don't understand the important disability issues involved in the widely publicized 2005 case.
During a recent Republican presidential debate in California, the candidates were asked whether Congress was right to intervene in the Terry Schiavo case by attempting to prevent the state of Florida from removing the disabled woman's feeding tube. The answers varied.
Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, said he thought it "was a mistake" for Congress to get involved and the matter should have been left at the state level. Senator John McCain said Congress "probably acted too hastily." And former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani called the case a "family dispute."
David Gibbs III of the Christian Law Association says the United States gives greater due process to convicted murderers than to innocent disabled people. The former attorney for Schiavo's parents argues that Congress did the right thing when it intervened to provide her those rights.
"Many of the candidates are following the political wind, if you will, instead of showing leadership and saying, 'You know what? That was good public policy back then. We need to stand up for the disabled. We need to stand up for the senior citizens,'" Gibbs says. "We need to have that compassion for vulnerable people as opposed to taking the mindset that those people that just don't matter," he notes.
It is disingenuous, the Christian attorney contends, for candidates to claim they are pro-life but not be willing to grant due process rights to the disabled. "If you're pro-life, you have to be pro-life at every step," he says.
"Please understand: our founding fathers understood that you don't have any liberty, our Constitution doesn't matter, if you don't protect the innocent life of the citizens," Gibbs explains. "That's why they talked about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- your free speech, your freedom of religion, your right to own a gun or [receive] due process of law," he says. "If the government can kill you, you have no true liberty."
When Rudy Giuliani visited Florida he initially said he was in favor of assisting Terry Schiavo but later backpedaled from those comments, Gibbs points out. And in the recent GOP presidential debate, he says, only Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and Congressman Duncan Hunter of California got the issue right when they were asked about the Schiavo case.
Please present the evidence that Wolfson was partisan, aside from the fact that you disagreed with his ruling, and those on the other side agreed with it.
the report is neither a reliable nor unbiased source. It doesn't even have legal standing, as the law under which it was written was unconstitutional.
Wolfson seems to the be the one person who had no prejudgement of the case, and had the ability and training to look at all the evidence and make recommendations. That the law was declared unconstitutional may invalidate the application of his work, but it doesn’t affect the work itself. The report is a source of medical information that is not otherwise easily available to the public.
Similarly, you should weigh autopsy findings against clinical findings earlier, and then weigh relatively poor prognoses against your good common sense knowing that the guardian refused to let the ward have therapy or testing or even stimulation.
Two different issues here. First, I have read the clinical material that I could find. (If you know of more, please link. I will always be willing to read more of the clinical material.) The autopsy report seems very in line with what I have read of the clinical findings, and with my medical experience.
Second, she did have testing and stimulation, and for anyone to claim that she did not is more spin. You could claim that it should have continued (although Terri Schiavo’s doctors at the time said it was futile), but the claim she didn’t have therapy or testing is demonstrably false.
(Did you know she could walk earlier, in parallel bars, with assistance?
Please link – I’d like to read about that.
Anyway, there is only so much you can learn from autopsy, and diagnosing PVS vs. MCS is not one of them.
Which, of course, no one with familiarity with the medicine has ever claimed. I certainly haven’t.
Most of the questions concerning the case are NOT scientific.
And those are outside the scope of what I am interested in discussing. I am, as I’ve said many times, interested in the medical facts.
When adherents of the so-called "right to die" movement -- supporting this man's effort to kill his wife -- posted a fraudulent comparison of two CTS in order to fool the public, the BS meter went off again. You ignored it and kept saying how bad the one CT was anyway, paying no attention to the deception involved and the taint it puts on your source material.
You are arguing that because the comparison is bad, the original CT is “tainted.” That doesn’t compute, unless you have evidence that the original scan is not that of Terri Schiavo or has been doctored. Evidence against that is the autopsy report, which is very consistent with that scan. And the corollary is the edited video released, brief snippets culled from hours of random movements. Surely those are just as fraudulent? What of the source of that fraud? How does your BS meter react to that?
You continue to take Terri's "bad" CT as proof that she should have been put to death.
Please back up that assertion. Nowhere have I said that. I merely point out the medical misinformation. If you want to assert that Terri Schiavo should have been indefinitely kept alive via feeding tube, I’m not arguing with that. I’m arguing with your claims about her medical condition which are not backed up the medical facts.
Not in the case at hand. "You do it too" is a playground argument
Perhaps, but that doesn't make it less valid when you try to disqualify one side's argument on the basis of spin and refuse to look at the spin on the other side.
Circular reasoning, especially since it's well known that anoxic brain damage causes muscle spasticity, and we know Terri Schiavo had anoxic brain damage. Why do you prefer to believe that the known anoxia was not the cause, but instead it was an injury for which there is no evidence other than the muscle spasm?
The case that Michael caused it is inferential, albeit a strong one, he being the only person present who might have caused her such an injury. There is no evidence that he did not cause it.
There is also no evidence that martians didn't cause it. Not a very good argument since you're asking to prove a negative, and there's a much more likely explanation - anoxic brain damage.
I read what I could find, but if you know where there is more, please link. As always, I'm happy to learn more, and change my mind if the medical facts support it.
Not this crap again....
I did. When the man is honored alongside Michael Schiavo, George Greer, Art Caplan and other celebrities of the right-to-die movement, you get a picture.
I also noted that he didn't represent his ward, as he was legally and morally required to do. She couldn't speak for herself. A guardian is there to guard his ward. It was his duty to speak for her. Terri was put to death without ever having a lawyer or a guardian ad litem who defended her right to life. Wolfson betrayed her.
I did. When the man is honored alongside Michael Schiavo, George Greer, Art Caplan and other celebrities of the right-to-die movement, you get a picture.
No, that's not evidence that he was partisan when he produced the report. That's evidence, after his report, that they agreed with his conclusions. To show him partisan, you'd have to show that he was biased beforehand.
I also noted that he didn't represent his ward, as he was legally and morally required to do. She couldn't speak for herself. A guardian is there to guard his ward. It was his duty to speak for her. Terri was put to death without ever having a lawyer or a guardian ad litem who defended her right to life. Wolfson betrayed her.
On the contrary. His appointment was not to "defend her right to life." From the appointment: "Dr Wolfson is to make a report and recommendations to the governor as to whether the governor should lift the stay that he previously entered." Also, "The Guardian ad Litem is not to act as a lawyer for the ward, but is to provide information to the governor."
His report contains that information, available to the public.
Sure, Terri had therapy at first. Nobody said she didn't. The Schindlers in their book praise Michael for what he did in that initial phase. There is some dispute about when Michael stopped it, but we can tell you the last possible date -- February 14, 1993. Everything changed when he got the malpractice money a few weeks earlier -- which was awarded precisely for her care and therapy. She had none after that; no therapy whatsoever for the last twelve years of her life. Michael wouldn't permit range of motion or any other therapy. Or testing. Or dental work. Or a PET or fMRI. There is sworn testimony that he accosted a nurse who had put a washcloth in Terri's hand to relieve contracture. "You can't do that," he said, "that's therapy." The nurses agreed on these points and that Michael tampered with Terri's charts. Doctors might order therapy but Michael made sure she didn't get it. He also barred most visitors, all reporters, photographs, religious medallions, fuzzy toy animals, greeting cards and things he regarded as stimulating to her. And on and on.
You say you are only interested in the medicine, so you have to back to 1990-1992 and deal with some missing records into the bargain. Many of us, however, take an interest in the last twelve years of Terri's life after the medicine stopped.
Yes, he had a special duty under this law, but I don't believe it abnegated guardianship law.
>> His report contains that information, available to the public.
Help yourself. If you please, however, do not take surprise if others infer a point of view from your choice of sources.
Doc, sometimes I think you are touch too innocent :-) Mr. Wolfson's viewpoint was well known in advance. The right-to-die adherents anticipated the report eagerly. The right-to-life people scratched their heads that Jeb Bush would appoint him. FYI, everybody soon lost interest in the report. It offers little or nothing new; i.e., it has no new ammunition for ideologues. We almost never hear anyone cite it now.
Afterward, Mr. Wolfson CHOSE to associate himself with Michael Schiavo, Ronald Cranford, George Greer, Mary Labyak, Art Caplan and other right-to-die superstars. The only members of the kill-Terri A Team with the brains to stay away were lawyers George Felos and Deborah Bushnell.
Sorry, I'll be traveling the next two days and have no chance to help or to join further discussion. But if you're not finding material, I'd have to guess that you need to peek into more Terri-friendly sites. There is a great deal of material readily available. One published sourcebook is "OurFight4Terri" by Cheryl Ford, RN, and Dr. J.E. Craddock. You can get that on Amazon (last I looked, anyway). It has original records and testimony in it, with commentary from two medics long involved in the case.
Cheers till later.
Which didn't cause itself and was not her only injury. She was badly hurt. There is no theory extant how she could have hurt herself. There was, however, one person present who could have hurt her. The one suspect had the means, the opportunity and an undisputed motive to hurt her. The one suspect was described as "hysterical" when police arrived. The one suspect offered a preposterous version of the events and lied to the police. The one suspect still tries to tell the world he turned her face up but she was found face down. (Why does he balk at admitting she was face down? Hmm.) To a Columbo, this adds up to a gimme.
'bye again.
"Again" is the wrong word. It hasn't stopped and it won't. People never forget injustice. Terri's story has it all: Villainy, intrigue, greed, adultery, mystery, justice miscarried, crime unpunished! They will be talking about this case as long as human stories are told.
We are, after all, still discussing Cain and Abel.
Be brave.
Again, please present evidence.
It offers little or nothing new; i.e., it has no new ammunition for ideologues.
Precisely why I look at it for the medical summary. It is not an ideological document with incorporated spin.
If you know of another unbiased source of medical information, please link or tell me where it might be found.
I’ll look at anything with medical information that I can find on the net. Sorry, but I won’t buy books, especially when they appear to be by ideologues on one side or the other.
Oh? What injuries constituted her "badly hurt" aside from what we all know, the cardiac arrest and anoxic brain damage?
We've been over the bone scan done in 1991, the fact that the hot spots don't automatically mean "fracture, and if they were fractures, don't correlate with the pattern of injury from a struggle. It would take a high speed car accident, a fall from a height, or something on that order to produce such injuries. And, of course, several docs, including her rehab docs and the autopsy report, attributed everything but the L1 hot spot to heterotrophic ossification, to which she was prone from her immobility. An L1 compression fracture doesn't come from a domestic violence struggle. It does come from osteoporosis, which we know she had.
The neck injury itself is the evidence of a neck injury, since it was observed contemporaneously.
I have now found an interview with Thogmartin, the pathologist. From the CNN interview: "Within one hour of her initial hospital admission, she received a radiograph of her cervical spine which was negative for trauma."
Which reinforces that Hammesfahr's testimony about a vertebral injury in the neck is utter bunk.
LP x Whatever installment of LP their up to now.
I’m calling them “MadmanIvan’s WAcko Anti-FReeper Liberals.”
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