Memo to ABC, NYTimes: Terri Schiavo was not “brain dead”
Via LifeNews, Terri Schiavo’s family members try to hold the MSM accountable for continued lies and distortions about their loved one:
Terri Schiavo’s family is upset with the media for again erroneously depicting the disabled woman as “brain dead” when she was able to interact with them before her former husband took her life. This time, the Schindler family says ABC News and the New York Times wrongly reported on her condition.
At first I thought that Michelle had taken up the Schiavo Cold Case because the Schindler family was getting all up in the MSM's grill, and nothing gives Michelle engorged ladywood quite like attacking the MSM, or at least the MSM that refuses to employ her which is, like, well, almost all of it. But further reading into her comments, where her readers dared to tell her to "Get over it" led to a treasure trove of sleuthing:
Get your facts straight. She was brain-damaged, not brain-dead. “Conclusive?” The autopsy left open many questions.
Late last night, I took the time to read the 39-page autopsy report of Terri Schiavo–something which, it is clear to me, most of the callous gloaters on the other side of this debate have not bothered to do. And will never do. These are people who can only talk about the sanctity of life if it’s enclosed in ghost quotes and pronounced with a sneer.
You do not need a medical examiner’s license to see that the report raises many more questions than it answers, though from the (once again) misleading media coverage, we are led to believe that the matters of Terri’s life and murder are resolved. They are not.
Here’s a typical example from an article headlined, “No trauma before Schiavo collapse:”
An autopsy report on a brain-damaged woman at the centre of a long legal battle in the US has shown that she suffered no trauma before her collapse.
But on page 4 of the M.E.’s summary, what the report actually says with regard to possible strangulation is this:
Autopsy examination of her neck structures 15 years after her initial collapse did not detect any signs of remote trauma, but, with such a delay, the exam was unlikely to show any residual neck findings.”
Further on:
Michael Schiavo and his supporters and doctors have long maintained that Terri suffered from an eating disorder. In interviews with Larry King, in countless newspaper articles over the past 15 years, and during his successful malpractice trial against Terri’s primary care physician, Michael Schiavo stressed his wife’s bulimia-related low potassium level as the cause of her initial collapse. Schiavo won $1 million in damages on the grounds that Schiavo’s obstetrician had failed to diagnose bulimia.
[...]
The autopsy report spends three-and-a-half pages debunking Schiavo’s claim, as well as the related claim that she had a heart attack (or, more medically precise, myocardial infarction). But if mentioned at all, the news reports I have seen have downplayed and buried these astonishing revelations (revelations which bear directly on Schiavo’s credibility regarding his claim that Terri would have wanted to die).
In Michael Schiavo’s favor, the autopsy report also casts doubt on the Schindler family’s long-held view that a 1991 bone scan indicated traumatic injury. The report notes that Terri had severe osteoporosis and that the bone scan findings might have also reflected “the aftermath of remote intense CPR, infection, bone turnover, artifact or intense physical therapy. In summary, any rib fractures, leg fractures, skull fractures or spine fractures that occurred concurrent with Mrs. Schiavo’s original collapse would almost certainly ahve been diagnosed in February 1990 especially with the number of phsyical exams, radiographs, and other evaluations she received in the early evolution of her care…”
However, the report notes this caveat: “Without the orginal bone scan and radiographs from that period, no other conclusions can [be] reasonably made.”
Personally I hope each and every one of the Republican candidates reads this and demands that Schiavo case be reopened. America demands nothing less.
