Posted on 03/30/2005 10:15:58 PM PST by freespirited
With the impending death of Terri Schiavo, US euthanasia advocates have scored a public relations hat-trick. Within a single month Clint Eastwood won an Oscar for Million Dollar Baby and The Sea Inside, about a quadriplegic who commits suicide, was feted as the best foreign film.
Now, after more than a decade of litigation, a 41-year-old brain-damaged Florida woman is slowly dying at her husband's request. What's more, recent polls show that most Americans are so confused about end-of-life treatment that they think that this is a good thing.
Who is to blame for this fear of extreme disability? Pro-lifers might plausibly blame "left-leaning media" for the Oscars. But the fate of Terri Schiavo is an own goal. Their lawyers were outsmarted at every turn by George Felos, the lawyer for Schiavo's husband.
Felos was the heavy artillery of the right-to-die movement, a cunning strategist who had won Florida's most influential right-to-die case in 1989, and who is a media-savvy talk-show guest.
Schiavo's death warrant was effectively signed in 2000, with a decision by Florida judge George Greer that she would have chosen to have her tube removed. It is this judgement that was upheld time and time again by superior courts. Pro-life bloggers have demonised Greer. But they ought to read some of the evidence.
First of all, the Schindler family were tricked. They are loving and compassionate people, but they were manoeuvred into giving a incredibly distorted picture of what the Catholic Church teaches about patients in a persistent vegetative state.
Her brother said that it would be a joy for him to see Schiavo alive - in a respirator or with limbs amputated.
Her mother stated that discomfort or pain was not a factor in discontinuing life support. The mother and the brother and sister all agreed that if they were in Schiavo's situation and had gangrenous limbs that had to be amputated, they would choose that rather than die.
But Catholics are not masochists. Their church has always taught, in the words of a 1980 Vatican document, that patients can "refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted".
To compound the confusion, Felos wheeled out a hospital chaplain, Father Gerard Murphy, as "an expert in the area of the Catholic Church's position on end of life care". Father Murphy said that removing Schiavo's feeding tube was consistent with his church's teaching. This is nonsense, of course. The Pope, also an expert on the Catholic Church's position, recently stated that "a sick person in a vegetative state . . . still has the right to basic health care (nutrition, hydration, cleanliness, warmth, etc)." But given the uncertainty about Schiavo's religious beliefs and the apparent insensitivity of her family, Greer found Murphy's testimony sympathetic and "completely candid".
Still worse were the medical experts. Felos easily found two "clear and convincing" neurologists who testified that Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. With all of the American medical profession a phone call away, the Schindlers' team wheeled out two duds.
One was a Dr William Maxfield, who was not even a neurologist, but an expert in hyperbaric medicine - breathing pressurised oxygen.
The other was a Dr William Hammesfahr, a neurologist whose garish website touts him as a "Nobel Prize nominee". Nobel Prize winners normally publish papers in major journals, unlike Dr Hammesfahr, whose publications are few and obscure. However, he was a 1992 keynote speaker for the Alabama Academy of Osteopathic Physicians. You get the picture: one random and one shonk.
To break the tie, Greer engaged a fifth neurologist, Dr Ronald Cranford. He is well spoken and highly convincing. He is also a spokesman for the right-to-die movement. His testimony tilted the scales.
The fundamental problem with the case mounted by the Schindler family is that they depicted Schiavo's plight as a religious issue.
In fact, it is a human rights issue. Schiavo is not in pain and is not dying. She is not on life support. Her care is not expensive. Why does her disability deserve a death sentence?
The American disability lawyer and activist Harriet McBryde Johnson put it clearly: "This belief that withdrawing a feeding tube is different than other killing - why is that a reasonable distinction? I haven't heard anybody say it would be OK to kill Terri Schiavo if she weren't on a feeding tube."
Given that US law favours living wills, even though studies have shown that they often don't work, the fight to save Schiavo's life was bound to be difficult. But it could have been won if it had been fought by professionals. It wasn't.
Michael Cook is the editor of BioEdge, an email newsletter on bioethics. mcook@australasianbioethics.org
It doesn't.
Bastards!
I echo that, JimRob.
Well put.
This article is a must read.
According to Time magazine's investigative reporter
interviewed by Bill O'Reilly tonight, Judge Greer placed
more weight on the examination and determinations made by
the neurologist from Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. Bambakidis, who
the Time reporter said was a neutral party: (not hired by Michael or the parents).
Hey! The big cheese chimes in!
The sick part of all this is that a life is taken because the parents didn't get the right people, not that they didn't have a case. There's something wrong with that.
I matters concerning life and death, do overs should be automatic. They are in capital murder cases.
Heck even kindergarten kids playing baseball have the sense to know that a do over is preferable to seeing a game won or lost on a questionable play.
The sick part of all this is that a life is taken because the parents didn't get the right people, not that they didn't have a case. There's something wrong with that.
Yes, this is the sad part. I think they're very nice people who were very naive about what they were up against. They should have gone to disability and/or pro-life organizations from the beginning. But, even if they didn't understand, their lawyer should have and HE should have sought advice from groups better versed in disability rights and right to life issues. Terri lost her fight the minute her "husband" got the malpractice settlement.
Cindie
I think when she passes, a sense of shame will set in among some who wanted her gone.
These doctors/legal slimeballs might not be too popular next week at their country club.
Just a thought.
No regular family could have been prepared for this kind of legal and media fight.
The piranhas of the law and the airwaves are overwhelming in their force.
And all but a few stood by and let them be eaten.
Oh, so this is how it happened. I'm very disturbed by the fact that known euthanasia advocates were able to sway the decision but I see what happened now.
Couple this with the terrible mistake their lawyer made when the case went federal (choosing to argue about Greer instead of taking the chance to start over anew with new judges), and the mistakes are heartbreaking.
But they didn't have the money Michael had. Nor does it seem they had any clue all of this was going to happen until after Michael got the money and changed his tune. I can't judge them, I don't know how well-educated and capable I would have been in a similar situation.
I do know that watching your daughter starve to death, a daughter who is still responsive with you and who can obviously still feel the pain of her forced death, must be torment.
Good point. It is not a "reasonable distinction". It's most certainly, NOT "ok". It may be legal (in Florida anyway) but that doesn't make it right.
...Continued prayers for Terri...
Dr. Bambakidis was appointed by Judge Greer whose neutrality seems questionable at best.
Cranford is bastards? He is bastard, in the singular.
Wasn't there a Bambakidis-Felos liaison before he was brought into the case?
I don't know, I think Cranford has enough bastard in him to be pluralized.
HANNITY: Did you once say that people in vegetative states should have no constitutional rights? Did you once, sir, say that patients with advanced Alzheimer's Disease, it makes no sense at all to put a feeding tube in them? Did you say those things?
CRANFORD: I think I did write an article on constitutional rights many years ago with another constitutional scholar about the constitutional rights in a vegetative state...
HANNITY: So you said it?
CRANFORD: Yes. Yes, I did.
Bambakidis and Felos were friends, as I have heard.
"Request?"
Technically, maybe.
In the real world, NO.
That's been totally discredited.
The Time reporter looked into that allegation straight away.
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