Legal, Ethical Questions Largely Decided, Experts Say (Schiavo case clear) [View All]

[DeepModem Mom]

Washington Post:
Legal and Ethical Questions Largely Decided, Experts Say

By Shankar Vedantam and Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 22, 2005; Page A06


For all the political controversy over whether Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state and should be allowed to die, neurologists and ethicists said yesterday that the case presents few scientific and legal ambiguities.

Congress, President Bush and others have sought to place the case in the context of a broader ethical and political struggle to define when life ends -- with resonances for the lingering question of when it begins. But many experts said this is the wrong test case for a nation struggling with those profound questions.

The brain-damaged woman will never regain the conscious awareness she lost 15 years ago, medical experts said, and decades of case law have already dealt with the legal issues raised by people in her condition.

Patients who do not return to normal within weeks of losing conscious awareness have a very poor prognosis, studies have shown. Electrical measurements have revealed no activity in the regions of Schiavo's brain needed for such consciousness, and repeated clinical examinations have left no doubt about her future.

"She is permanently unconscious and will never again have consciousness," said Robert M. Veatch, a professor of medical ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, adding that she cannot feel sensations of hunger or thirst. "She can't starve or be thirsty. Anyone who uses those words doesn't understand the condition she is in."...


(Ronald Cranford, a physician who has examined Schiavo, is quoted in the article: "Tomorrow I will do a transplant surgery if (Frist) starts doing neurology. I have as much competence in transplant surgery as he is competent to do a neurological diagnosis on a videotape. He has no clue.")


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55137-2005Mar21.html