Friction between in-laws at center of Schiavo fight

[JohnnyBz00LS]

Friction between in-laws at center of Schiavo fight

Associated Press


NEW YORK – Incompatible in-laws have long been a staple for gag writers, but the Terri Schiavo case is a reminder that such friction often has wrenchingly unfunny consequences – bitter estrangement, all-out legal battles, even violence.

Indeed, it is the conflict between Terri Schiavo’s husband, Michael, and her parents that brought the case to national attention. If the parents agreed with his efforts to remove the brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube, it is unlikely that right-to-life activists and politicians would have mobilized regardless of other circumstances.

“There have been similar cases where people have been disconnected, but because they didn’t reach the same level of in-law tensions, they didn’t evoke such strong feelings,” said Steven Mintz, a University of Houston professor specializing in the history of families.

“The subtext of the case is intergenerational tension,” Mintz said. “Parents are more invested than ever in their children, even when they’re grown.”

Normally, U.S. law is clear cut – however distressed in-laws might be over developments within their child’s marriage, they have no special right to intervene.

“This area of law has been long established,” said Phyllis Bossin, a Cincinnati attorney who formerly chaired the American Bar Association’s Family Law Section. “Once you get married, your spouse gets a whole lot of legal rights, including the right to make medical decisions for you.”

Atlanta divorce lawyer John Mayoue noted that in-laws might disagree passionately with decisions affecting their married children or even their grandchildren – should a teenage granddaughter have breast-augmentation surgery? Should a Jewish grandson have a bar mitzvah?

“But would we want them to be able to go to court or petition Congress to get their way?” Mayoue asked. “Where would you draw the line?”

Mayoue said he found it ironic that conservative activists who promote the sanctity of marriage when opposing same-sex unions have – in the Schiavo case – sided with in-laws in what is legally a spouse’s right.

“The conservatives are getting involved in tearing down the foundation of something they say needs protection,” Mayoue said.

Conservative leaders, however, contend that Michael Schiavo undermined the sanctity of his marriage by cohabiting and raising children with another woman, while refusing to divorce Terri and place her in the guardianship of her parents.

“We support the nuclear family – that’s the paramount family,” said Carrie Gordon Earll, a bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family.

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said his normal inclination to oppose any infringement on the husband-wife relationship was altered in this case by Michael Schiavo’s cohabitation and the absence of a living will written by Terri Schiavo.

“I’m not usually in favor of government intrusion,” Perkins said. “But ultimately the government does have a right to protect people.”

 

[Kbob]

I'm not really familiar with the case. I haven't been following the news much lately. But I will reply to the part you emphasized since that seems to be your primary concern.

Mayoue said he found it ironic that conservative activists who promote the sanctity of marriage when opposing same-sex unions have – in the Schiavo case – sided with in-laws in what is legally a spouse’s right.

“The conservatives are getting involved in tearing down the foundation of something they say needs protection,” Mayoue said.

Nice try, Mr. Mayoue, but you fail to recognize the issue for what it is. The question is not whether the husband can make medical decisions for his wife who is unable to. Of course he can. The question is whether the husband can make a decision to starve his wife to death. This is a life decision, not a medical one.

 

[ERIC1]

they should put this poor woman out of her misery. 15 years as a vegitable is is a horror i wouldnt wish on my worst enemy

 

[1_XLR]

The parents have battled this in court for over two years and have lost every time, based on our laws and the facts of the case.
It's a discrace to play politics with this womans life, or lack there of.
Let her die in peace

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

:I

What possible reason would her husband (who's been getting ALOT of un-warranted flak) have to grant her wish of allowing her to end this torture? There's no life insurance, so it can't be money. If he simply wanted to rid himself of the burden of caring for her, he would've divorced her long ago and handed her care over to her parents. The only thing left is that he loves her deeply enough to ensure that her suffering can be stopped. Beginning a life w/ this other woman has nothing to do w/ the situation. LOVE is not something that gets sub-divided between people. When you have a 2nd child, does the 1st child now get only 1/2 of your love?

I highlighted that section of text to emphasize the hypocracy of the self-anoited GOP who is merely using this case for more grandstanding.

 

[Kbob]

I highlighted that section of text to emphasize the hypocracy of the self-anoited GOP who is merely using this case for more grandstanding.

I'm not contending the grandstanding accusation. That's a given. I'm contending the "hypocrisy" claim. It's not. It is political, but it's not hypocritical compared to the sanctity of marriage argument.

 

[1_XLR]

:I

What possible reason would her husband (who's been getting ALOT of un-warranted flak) have to grant her wish of allowing her to end this torture? There's no life insurance, so it can't be money. If he simply wanted to rid himself of the burden of caring for her, he would've divorced her long ago and handed her care over to her parents. The only thing left is that he loves her deeply enough to ensure that her suffering can be stopped. Beginning a life w/ this other woman has nothing to do w/ the situation. LOVE is not something that gets sub-divided between people. When you have a 2nd child, does the 1st child now get only 1/2 of your love?

I highlighted that section of text to emphasize the hypocracy of the self-anoited GOP who is merely using this case for more grandstanding.

the hubby had a bonified offer of $1 million to turn the care over to the parents....he declined. You can't hate your in-laws that much! But you can love your wife that much

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

I'm not contending the grandstanding accusation. That's a given. I'm contending the "hypocrisy" claim. It's not. It is political, but it's not hypocritical compared to the sanctity of marriage argument.

Please elaborate on the "sanctity of marriage argument". You don't see the hypocracy of those, who on one hand, deny some of those amongst us who truly love each other the "privilage" of a legally recognized marriage "till death do us part", yet on the other hand show absolutely no respect for this man's oath of "till death do us part" by suggesting that he should have divorced his wife long ago?? If "hypocracy" isn't the right word, please suggest the correct one. I've never claimed to be an expert on the english language or the Webster dictionary.

 

[97silverlsc]

Read this article and you might get an idea where the hypocrisy comes from:

Whose Right to Life?
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 23 March 2005

The nation's attention is riveted on the fate of one poor woman in a Florida hospice. Terri Schiavo has been in a persistent vegetative state, with no upper brain function, for 15 years. Ten state courts have upheld Terri's husband's request to remove her feeding tube. Those courts have determined by clear and convincing evidence, a standard set by the United States Supreme Court, that Terri would not have wanted to be kept alive in such a condition.

Nevertheless, Terri's parents, aided by Republicans in Congress and George W. Bush, are fighting to keep her alive. They have made her case a cause celebre. A memo circulated to GOP senators over the weekend described this as a "great political issue" because it will play to the "pro-life base" of the Republican Party.

The abortion debate has long been framed in terms of "pro-choice" versus "pro-life." But this dichotomy has always struck me as misleading.

What is the "right to life"? Does it simply include unborn fetuses, stem cells, and people in persistent vegetative states? Or does it also refer to health care for the 40 million Americans who don't have it; aid to children whose single moms can't make ends meet; and billions of dollars in Medicaid - a virtual lifeline for millions - that Bush tried to cut? What about the 1524 American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who have died in a war that never should have happened? Didn't they have the right to life?

Unprecedented emergency legislation rushed through Congress on the eve of the Easter recess has sent the Schiavo case into the federal courts for a new round of hearings. After he signed the bill in the wee hours of Monday morning, Bush said, "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life."

This statute directly contradicts Bush's actions while Governor of Texas. Then, Bush signed a bill that allows hospitals to stop feeding a patient whose prognosis is so poor that further care would be futile, if the patient cannot pay his or her medical expenses. Just this past week, a baby was pulled off life support in Texas, against his mother's wishes.

As Governor, Bush refused to stay executions in numerous death penalty cases. Alberto Gonzales, then counsel to the Governor, provided his boss with "scant summaries" on capital punishment cases that "repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence," according to the Atlantic Monthly.

Gonzales prepared a summary of the case of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man executed for murdering a restaurant manager. The jury was never told about Washington's mental condition. Gonzales's three-page summary mentioned only that Washington's defense counsel's 30-page plea for clemency (which covered the mental competency issue) was rejected by the Texas parole board. Bush declined to stop executions in 56 of the 57 cases in which Gonzales wrote abbreviated memos.

In those cases, did Bush follow "a presumption in favor of life"?

Conservatives support the principle of federalism, or states' rights. Each state should be able to maintain its own legal system, free from federal encroachment, according to this doctrine. But many Republicans have championed states' rights only when they liked the outcome and rejected it when they didn't.

As Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich) said on the floor of the House during the debate on Monday, "Last month, the Majority passed a class action bill that took jurisdiction away from state courts because they feared they would treat corporate wrongdoers too harshly. Today we are sending a case from the state courts to the federal courts even though it is the most extensively litigated 'right to die' case in our nation's history."

"By passing legislation which wrests jurisdiction away from a state judge and sends it to a single pre-selected federal court," Conyers said, "we will abandon any pretense of federalism. The concept of a Jeffersonian Democracy as envisioned by the founders, and the states as 'laboratories of democracy' as articulated by Justice Brandeis will lie in tatters."

One of the most tragic aspects of the Schiavo case is the effect this legislation will have on family decisions for years to come. Although the Democrats agreed to the bill only if it were limited to Terri Schiavo's situation, it will certainly open the floodgates to litigation which inserts the courts into private matters.

This attempt by Republican leaders to "shamelessly interject the federal government into the wrenching Schiavo family dispute" amounts to a "constitutional coup d'etat," according to the Los Angeles Times. It is "the new front in what began as the abortion war, an effort to translate religious dogma into law under the right-to-life banner."

 

[Kbob]

Please elaborate on the "sanctity of marriage argument". You don't see the hypocracy of those, who on one hand, deny some of those amongst us who truly love each other the "privilage" of a legally recognized marriage "till death do us part", yet on the other hand show absolutely no respect for this man's oath of "till death do us part" by suggesting that he should have divorced his wife long ago?? If "hypocracy" isn't the right word, please suggest the correct one. I've never claimed to be an expert on the english language or the Webster dictionary.

The "sanctity of marriage" is quoted from your original article. That entails many things. It doesn't mean that a man can do whatever he wants that affects his wife without question or repercussions. Letting her die may well be the right thing, I can't say for sure. Your "till death do us part" case is weak, since that could include murder of a woman by her husband. I have been reading both sides of the argument on the net since my previous post, and this case is anything but black and white. And given the circumstances, I believe it was right to question this case. If the pro-life memo accusation is true, then that is just wrong, plain and simple. And people using this case to bash conservatives in general is also wrong, plain and simple. Being pro-life and supporting traditional marriage and supporting the death penalty and supporting a war and supporting gun ownership rights are not contradictory. A million examples could be given, but I think most people are well aware of them. Claiming they are and that people who believe these things are "hypocritical" is just ignorant. These other things are brought up solely to cast a cloud of doubt and confusion on the opposition concerning the subject; an effective debating technique if the opposition bites. But I'm not biting.

 

[Kbob]

Read this article and you might get an idea where the hypocrisy comes from:

Read an opinionated editorial you spent 3 minutes finding, then spend half an hour of my own time rebutting it with my own thoughts? Sorry, but no. The most I'll give you is quid pro quo:



Torturing Terri Schiavo
She’d be better off if she were a terrorist.


A few months back, I wrote an article for Commentary arguing that we ought to reconsider our anti-torture laws. The argument wasn’t novel. It echoed contentions that had been made with great persuasive force by Harvard’s Professor Alan Dershowitz: that under circumstances of imminent harm to thousands of moral innocents (the so-called “ticking bomb” scenario), it would be appropriate to inflict, under court-supervision, intense but non-lethal pain in an effort to wring information from a morally culpable person — a terrorist known to be complicit in the plot.


As one might predict with such a third rail, my mail was copious and indignant. Opening the door by even a sliver for torture, I was admonished, was the most reprehensible of slippery slopes. No matter how well-intentioned was the idea, no matter the lives that might be saved, no matter how certain we might be about the guilt of the detainee, the very thought that such a thing might be legal would render us no better than the savages we were fighting.

Well, lo and behold, a court-ordered torture is set to begin in Florida on Friday at 1 P.M.

It will not produce a scintilla of socially useful information. It will not save a single innocent life. It is not narrowly targeted on a morally culpable person — the torture-victim is herself as innocent as she is defenseless. It is not, moreover, meant to be brief and non-lethal: The torture will take about two excruciating weeks, and its sole and only purpose is to kill the victim.

On Friday afternoon, unless humanity intervenes, the state of Florida is scheduled to begin its court-ordered torture-murder of Terri Schiavo, whose only crime is that she is an inconvenience. A nuisance to a faithless husband grown tired of the toll on his new love interest and depleting bank account — an account that was inflated only because a jury, in 1992, awarded him over a million dollars, mostly as a trust to pay for Terri’s continued care, in a medical malpractice verdict.

In this instance, though, deafening is the only word for the silence of my former interlocutors — -civil-liberties activists characteristically set on hysteria auto-pilot the moment an al Qaeda terrorist is rumored to have been sent to bed without supper by Don Rumsfeld or Al Gonzales (something that would, of course, be rank rumor since, if you kill or try to kill enough Americans, you can be certain our government will get you three halal squares a day).

Not so Terri Schiavo. She will be starved and dehydrated. Until she is dead. By court order.

Terri is a 40-year-old woman who suffered brain damage after a diagnosed heart attack when she was 26. In state legal proceedings dominated by macabre right-to-die activists, a judge found her to be reduced to a permanent vegetative state (PVS), drawing on examinations that appear grossly inadequate to the task of what objective specialists say is a complex diagnosis. Whether she would technically be found a PVS case by a court that was honestly interested in getting a real fix on her condition — rather than breaking new ground in just how far the Left can go in deciding whose life has value — is beside the point. She is alive and, periodically, both alert and responsive.

Her parents love her and want to care for her. Imagine if you had a child who was defenseless, dependent, and vulnerable — many of us, indeed, need not imagine — and the state told you not only to step aside but that you had to watch, helpless, while it took two weeks to kill her. That’s what’s happening in Florida. Starting Friday.

On another Friday, seven years ago, Mohammed Daoud al-`Owhali and Khalfan Khamis Mohammed blew up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing over 240 people. They were brought to the United States for trial. They were given, at public expense, multiple, highly experienced capital lawyers, and permitted extensive audiences to plead with the Justice Department not to seek the death penalty. When a capital indictment nevertheless was filed, they were given weeks of voir dire to ensure a jury of twelve people open to the notion that even the lives of mass-murderers have value. They were then given seven months of trial and sentencing proceedings, suffuse with every legal and factual presumption that their lives had worth and should be spared. And so they were.

That’s what the law says we must do for terrorists seeking to destroy our country and to slaughter us indiscriminately.

What is the law doing for Terri Schiavo?

What kind of law is it, what kind of society is it, that says the lives of Khalfan Khamis Mohammed and Mohammed Daoud al-`Owhali’s have value — over which we must anguish and for the sustenance of which we must expend tens of thousands annually — but Terri Schiavo’s is readily dispensable? By court-ordered torture over the wrenching pleas of parents ready and willing to care for her?

What kind of society goes into a lather over the imposition of bright lights and stress positions for barbarians who might have information that will save lives, but yawns while a defenseless woman who hasn’t hurt anyone is willfully starved and dehydrated? By a court — the bulwark purportedly protecting our right to life?

The torture starts Friday, at 1 P.M. Unless we do something to stop it.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

Starvation not painful, experts say

For all those mis-informed people claiming "starvation" is "torture".......


Starvation not painful, experts say

Many report euphoric state

By Karen Kaplan and Rosie Mestel

Los Angeles Times


After suffering through cancer, the middle-age woman decided her illness was too much to bear. Everything she ate, she painfully vomited back up. The prospect of surgery and a colostomy bag held no appeal.

And so, against the advice of her doctors, the patient decided to stop eating and drinking.

Over the next 40 days in 1993, Dr. Robert Sullivan of Duke University Medical Center observed her gradual decline, providing one of the most detailed clinical accounts of starvation and dehydration.

Instead of feeling pain, the patient experienced the characteristic sense of euphoria that accompanies a complete lack of food and water.

She was cogent for weeks, chatting with her caregivers in the nursing home and writing letters to family and friends.

As her organs finally failed, she slipped painlessly into a coma and died.

In the evolving saga of Terri Schiavo, the prospect of the 41-year-old Florida woman suffering a slow and painful death from starvation has been a galvanizing force.

But medical experts say going without food and water in the last days and weeks of life is as natural as death itself.

The body is equipped with its own resources to adjust to death, they say.

In fact, eating and drinking during severe illness can be painful because of the demands it places on weakened organs.

“What my patients have told me over the last 25 years is that when they stop eating and drinking, there’s nothing unpleasant about it – in fact it can be quite blissful and euphoric,” said Dr. Perry G. Fine, vice president of medical affairs at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization in Arlington, Va. “It’s a very smooth, graceful and elegant way to go.”

Schiavo, who hasn’t had any food or water since Friday, has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years that makes it impossible for her brain to recognize pain, doctors say.

“Her reflexes with respect to thirst or hunger are as broken as her ability to think thoughts or dream dreams or do anything a normal, healthy brain does,” Fine said.

But even if her brain were functioning normally and she were aware of her condition, she would be comfortable, doctors say.

“The word ‘starve’ is so emotionally loaded,” Fine said. “People equate that with the hunger pains they feel or the thirst they feel after a long, hot day of hiking. To jump from that to a person who has an end-stage illness is a gigantic leap.”

Contrary to the visceral fears of humans, death by starvation is the norm in nature – and the body is prepared for it.

“The cessation of eating and drinking is the dominant way that mammals die,” said Dr. Ira Byock, director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. “It is a very gentle way that nature has provided for animals to leave this life.”

In a 2003 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 102 hospice nurses caring for terminally ill patients who refused food and drink described their patients’ final days as peaceful, with less pain and suffering than those who had elected to die through physician-assisted suicide.

The average rating given by the nurses for the patients’ quality of death was an 8 on a scale where 9 represented a “very good death” and 0 was a “very bad death.”

Patients deprived of food and water will die of dehydration rather than starvation, unless they succumb to their underlying illness first.

Without fluids, the body loses its ability to maintain the proper balance of potassium, sodium, calcium and other electrolytes in the bloodstream and inside cells.

The kidneys react to the fluid shortage by conserving as many bodily liquids as possible.

The brain, which relies on chemical signals to function properly, begins to deteriorate. So do the heart and other muscles, causing patients to feel tired and lethargic.

“Everything in the body is geared toward trying to maintain that normal balance,” Fine said. “The body will do everything it can to maintain this balance if it’s working well.”

Meanwhile, the body begins mining its stores of fat and muscle to get the carbohydrates and proteins it needs to make energy.

“If you mine too many proteins in the heart, it gets unstable,” Sullivan said. That can give rise to an irregular heartbeat, which can cause the patient to die of cardiac arrest. Or, if the muscles in the chest wall become weak, the patient can end up with pneumonia, he said.

Patients already weakened by disease begin feeling the effects after a few days, Fine said.

They eventually descend into a coma and finally death. The entire process usually takes one to two weeks, although a patient who is otherwise healthy – such as Schiavo – could hold on much longer.

Throughout the process, the body strives to suppress the normal feelings of pain associated with deprivation.

That pain of hunger is felt only by those who subsist on small amounts of food and water – victims of famine, for instance, or concentration-camp inmates. They become ravenous as their bodies crave more fuel, said Sullivan, a senior fellow at Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging.

After 24 hours without any food, “the body goes into a different mode, and you’re not hungry anymore,” he said. “Total starvation is not painful or uncomfortable at all. When we were hunting rabbits millions of years ago, we had to have a backup mode because we didn’t always get a rabbit. You can’t go hunting if you’re hungry.”


If you still can't handle this starvation thing, then give her the needle, but please have mercy on this poor soul and QUIT DENYING her from meeting her maker!! If I was in Michael Schiavo's shoes, after this all blows over, I'd be filing a huge lawsuit against her parents and every damn politician who stood in the way of giving his wife her wish. You DOUBT her wish? Show me ONE person who would want to be kept in this state after 15 friggin' years!! You think a miracle could still occur? 15 years have elapsed and no miracle has happened yet. Times UP for Christ Sakes!

 

[Kbob]

For all those mis-informed people claiming "starvation" is "torture".......

So it's okay to starve my pets to death? Get real, dude.

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

So it's okay to starve my pets to death? Get real, dude.

Apples and oranges, get real dude.

 

[Kbob]

Apples and oranges, get real dude.

Is it? According to your article, it would be better for the pet to be starved to death rather than euthanized; less pain involved, etc.

 

[Kbob]

My above post was also an attempt by myself to cloud and confuse. I apologize. Here's a good non-biased site I found about the case: site

All I know is what it's like to love my wife and what it's like to love my child. I don't blame her husband or her parents. I just don't like it when my beliefs are portrayed as hypocritical or contradictory when they are not.

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

My above post was also an attempt by myself to cloud and confuse. I apologize. Here's a good non-biased site I found about the case: site

:Beer Thanks for the very informative link. I've finally gotten around to reading it pretty much to the end. I think (and wish) everyone should dig down to the facts of this case before giving out a knee-jerk reaction. The one tidbit that sums is up for me is Terri's wishes, which was established in court based on testimony of not one, but 3 people, one of who was her "best friend" (link to those court findings found from the link above). I find it VERY hard to find fault w/ Michael Schiavo's actions. He has broken not one law of this land. While I feel the pain that her parents are experiencing (no one likes to bury their child), I think that they need to step back and reflect on what Terri truly would have wanted, and take solice in the fact that Terry will soon be home with her maker.

 

[hottweelz]

Starving her to death? Oh no, cry me a river... We all (by now) know WHY she has been in this vegetative state... Binge and Purge until your Potassium level drops to the point it causes a Heart Attack?! She hurt her husband and family over VANITY

If I was the husband, I'd say "Keep your million and your daughter"

What world is this, Terry should be a Poster Child for Teenage Girls!

"Eat and Throw Up, this is what happens to you!"

Terry did this to her self... Ignorance is bliss, she can set an example to end Bulimia

The husband HAS TAKEN FLAK, and it's undue... we live in a Religious Fanatic Nation now, people do not examine truths as a whole and people do not think about consequences, the only thing people want to do is abide by the bible in 2005 and point fingers at someone who had no direct reflection on the situation at hand.

You think the husband didn't try to help her 15-20 years ago... I'm sure he did... She did this...

I say keep the Feeding Tube out, let her die from not eating.... It's exactly what she did on her own 15 years ago, it was her decision to "not digest" food, so follow through with her own decision....

 

[barry2952]

Schiavo Autopsy Shows Massive Brain Damage

By MITCH STACY
LARGO, Fla. (AP) - The autopsy of Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding she was severely and irreversibly brain-damaged and blind as well. The report, released Wednesday, also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused before she collapsed.

Yet medical examiners could not say for certain what caused her sudden 1990 collapse, long thought to have been brought on by an eating disorder.

The findings vindicated Michael Schiavo in his long and vitriolic battle with his in-laws, who insisted her condition was not hopeless and suggested that their daughter was the victim of violence by their son-in-law.

In its report, the medical examiner's office cast doubt on both the abuse and eating disorder theory.

The autopsy results on the 41-year-old woman were made public more than two months after Schiavo died of dehydration on March 31 following the removal of her feeding tube 13 days earlier. The death ended an extraordinary right-to-die battle that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House.

The autopsy showed that Schiavo's brain had shrunk to about half the normal size for a woman her age and that it bore signs of severe damage.

``This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons,'' said Pinellas-Pasco County Medical Examiner Dr. Jon Thogmartin, who led the autopsy team. He also said she was blind, because the ``vision centers of her brain were dead.''

George Felos, attorney for Michael Schiavo, said the findings back up their contentions made ``for years and years'' that Terri Schiavo had no hope of recovery. He said Michael Schiavo plans to release autopsy photographs of her shrunken brain.

``Mr. Schiavo has received so much criticism throughout this case that I'm certain there's a part of him that was pleased to hear these results and the hard science behind them,'' Felos said.

Nevertheless, attorney David Gibbs III said Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, continue to believe she was not in a vegetative state and questioned the conclusion that she was blind.

The finding that she was blind counters a widely seen videotape released by her parents of Terri Schiavo in her hospice bed. The video showed Schiavo appearing to turn toward her mother's voice and smile. She moaned and laughed. Her head moved up and down and she seemed to follow the progress of a brightly colored Mickey Mouse balloon.

The parents said the video that showed she was aware of her surroundings, but doctors said her reactions were automatic responses and not evidence of consciousness.

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the autopsy did nothing to change President Bush's position that Schiavo's feeding tube should not have been disconnected. He had signed a bill, rushed through by Congress in March, in a last-ditch effort to restore her feeding tube.

Thogmartin also said Schiavo would not have been able to eat or drink if given food by mouth as the Schindlers wanted after the tube was removed. In fact, he said, she might easily have choked to death if such feedings had been tried.

``Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not,'' Thogmartin told reporters.

The autopsy included 274 external and internal body images and an exhaustive review of Terri Schiavo's medical records, police reports and social services agency records.

Thogmartin said that the autopsy produced no conclusion on what triggered the temporary heart stoppage that caused her collapse and brain damage. He said there was no evidence of drug use, though he cautioned that Schiavo was not tested in 1990 for every conceivable substance that could have been in her blood.

He said there was no proof she suffered from an eating disorder such as bulimia, which can disrupt the body chemistry with lethal effect. The main piece of evidence cited for an eating disorder - the low levels of potassium in her blood in 1990 - could have been caused by the emergency treatment she received at the time, Thogmartin said.

While she had lost more than 100 pounds since high school, Schiavo never confessed to an eating disorder, she did not take diet pills and no one had witnessed her purging food, the medical examiner said.

He also discounted the possibility that she had overdosed on caffeine from drinking large amounts of tea in an effort to keep her weight down.

The cause of death was ruled dehydration from removal of the feeding tube, but the underlying reason for her brain damage was officially listed as ``undetermined.''

In addition, the autopsy found no traces of morphine in her system at her death, although she had been given two doses in the days before she died. The Schindlers had contended that morphine might have been used to speed their daughter's death.

The Schindlers fought their son-in-law in court over their daughter's fate for nearly seven years, battling to the end with conservatives at their side. Michael Schiavo said his wife never would have wanted to be kept alive artificially in such a condition.

Courts repeatedly rejected extraordinary attempts at intervention by Florida lawmakers, Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress and the president on behalf of her parents.

Experts said that the autopsy demonstrates how difficult it is for people to recover from severe brain damage.

``People should understand that sometimes, for known or unknown reasons, individuals sustain massive brain injury that for which healing is not possible,'' said Dr. Karen Weidenheim, the chief of neuropathology at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. ``Everything that could have been done was done for this lady for 15 years, and this case is very tragic.''

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

Michael Schiavo: Vindicated.

GWB: Digs his hole a little deeper.