DALE McFEATTERS: The Schiavo autopsy

[brooklynite]

(SH) - Led by Republican social conservatives, Congress and President Bush lunged into a private and sad medical decision - whether a husband could have the feeding tube removed from his wife who had been comatose for 15 years.

...snip...

Senate Republican leader Bill Frist, a physician, looked at a 4-year-old video of Terri Schiavo and declared that she was not in a persistent vegetative state.

...snip...

Now an autopsy has been done.

Terri Schiavo was indeed in a persistent vegetative state, having suffered massive and irreversible brain damage beyond help from any kind of therapy or treatment, the medical examiner found. Her brain weighed less than half the expected weight of a normal brain.

...snip...

Now that the medical examiner has spoken, it's time for Frist, DeLay, et al., to answer for their behavior, starting with an apology to Michael Schiavo and a concession that all those judges turned out to be right after all.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/24hour/opinions/story/2483666p-10825280c.html

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. Frist needs to surrender his medical license

Incompetence. Such a bad trait in a physician, don't you think?

DeLay and Bush and the rest ought to go ........... ah, never mind.

[jpak]

2. And this asshole thinks he can run for president

after all this????

All those poor kitties died in vain...

[BOSSHOG]

3. Please frist, run for president

RUN ON YOUR RECORD

[ElectroPrincess]

4. I find the following the most poignant -

...snip...

At every judicial step of the way, including six trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, the courts ruled for Michael Schiavo and they did so again with Frist and DeLay's final grandstanding attempt to intervene, finding their 11th-hour bill "demonstrably at odds" with the Constitution.

DeLay threatened retribution against the judges, thundering, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

I hope we have at least one Democratic Leader who will INSIST that both "Hello Kitty" Frist and "Hammer-Head" Delay forward a FORMAL apology to Michael Schiavo?

Because I've enjoyed an advanced education in the field of physiological psychology, I tried my best to describe the behaviors of Terri Shiavo as NOT evidence of consciousness, but instead, reflexive ... I feel that even my little League Masters from a State University blessed me with an understanding of a "persistent vegetative state" seemingly much clearer than that held by Frist - a man who admittedly has at least, 15 IQ points on me.

This situation just adds credence to the unsavory notion that arrogance and greed can be positively correlated with people of high intelligence. What a waste that all those precious "little gray cells" went to a man who couldn't give a tinker's damn about anything other than his own political ambitions.

[Guckert]

5. Sean Hannity is already saying he was right. i guess because the autopsy

proved she was alive??? because everything else he was wrong about. just to listen to this tool is hilarious.

[Larkspur]

6. I expect Frist and Delay to create bills to outlaw science and autopsies

</sarcasm>

[kenny blankenship]

7. Technically, the autopsy CANNOT confirm the PVS diagnosis

as the neuropathologist notes in the report, PVS is a CLINICAL diagnosis not a pathological diagnosis. Of course that hardly means that PVS is an invalid diagnosis. It just means there's no definitive measure a neuropathologist can apply to confirm a PVS diagnosis either pre- or post-mortem. As his report concludes,

"Neuropathologic examination of the decedent's brain--or any brain for that matter--cannot prove or disprove a diagnosis of persistent vegatative state or minimally conscious state."

The neuropathologist here accordingly treats the PVS diagnosis as a given, and looks for related evidence. He certainly didn't find any disproving evidence.

Autopsies can cast huge doubt on a PVS diagnoses if the brain was found to be more or less intact post-mortem. This brain was very badly damaged according to Dr. Steven J. Nelson the consulting neuropathologist, as he comments

"Brain weight is an important index of its pathologic state. Braiun weight is correlated with height, weight, age, and sex. The decedent's brain was grossly abnormal and weighed only 615 grams (1.35 lbs.). That weight is less than half of the expected tabular weight for a decedent of her adult age of 41 years 3months 28 days. By way of comparison, the brain of Karen Ann Quinlan weighed 835 grams at the time of her death, after 10 years in a similar persistent vegatative state."

It's important to stick to what the report actually says, understanding the limits of what it can and can't prove, because shitheads like Hannity will seize on discrepancies between what you claim is in the report and what is actually there and go from there screaming that the report is confirmation of their lies about Schiavo's PVS, because "the other side is making false statements about the report" or some such bullshit.
BE CAREFUL NOT TO OVERSTATE.