Terri Schiavo + 5 years

[crowmanyclouds]

@lekatt

… I don’t have the faith most do in MRI’s and things like that …

Things like, umm, fMRIs?

@lekatt

… scientists in the UK and Belgium did an fMRI …

Functional MRI or functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a type of specialized MRI scan. …[RIGHT]CITE[/RIGHT]

So, we can all just ignore that cite then, right?

CMC fnord!

[lekatt]

@Monty

Good grief! When are you going to accept the simple fact–FACT!–that the woman’s brain was gone? Just because you want to believe that there’s some ethereal portion of the brain that’s never been proven to exist does not make it possible that the woman’s dissolved brain was still functioning in any meaningful sense of the word.

The case you’re talking about was about a woman whose brain was still there. That was not the case with Schiavo. Hers was dissolved.

What was it dissolved in, some sort of acid? How did this happen?

[lekatt]

@crowmanyclouds

Things like, umm, fMRIs?So, we can all just ignore that cite then, right?

CMC fnord!

This quote came from a skeptical site. I would think you would like it.

[Der_Trihs]

@lekatt

What was it dissolved in, some sort of acid? How did this happen?

She suffered massive brain damage. From her Wiki article:

Examination of Schiavo’s nervous system by neuropathologist Stephen J. Nelson, M.D., revealed extensive injury. The brain itself weighed only 615 g, only half the weight expected for a female of her age, height, and weight, an effect caused by the loss of a massive amount of neurons. Microscopic examination revealed extensive damage to nearly all brain regions, including the cerebral cortex, the thalami, the basal ganglia, the hippocampus, the cerebellum, and the midbrain. The neuropathologic changes in her brain were precisely of the type seen in patients who enter a PVS following cardiac arrest. Throughout the cerebral cortex, the large pyramidal neurons that comprise some 70% of cortical cells – critical to the functioning of the cortex – were completely lost. The pattern of damage to the cortex, with injury tending to worsen from the front of the cortex to the back, is also typical. There was marked damage to important relay circuits deep in the brain (the thalami) – another common pathologic finding in cases of PVS. The damage was, in the words of Thogmartin, “irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons.”[67]

As for what happened to the tissue? When cells die, the body cleans up the debris.

[Marley23]

She suffered enormous brain damage because her heart stopped, and her brain got no oxygen for an extended period of time. I think atrophy took care of the rest.

[Carol_the_Impaler]

lekatt doesn’t have faith in atrophy like most do.

[Monty]

This isn’t right, IMHO. We’re not allowed to take lekatt to task for his outrageous assertions in this thread and now he’s playing the “Well, what do you think happened?” game. I say it’s a game because it’s already been posted what happened to the poor woman. Science is not Magic. And slander/libel of Mr. Schiavo isn’t honest. He is not here to debate.

[lekatt]

@Der_Trihs

She suffered massive brain damage. From her Wiki article:

As for what happened to the tissue? When cells die, the body cleans up the debris.

It took a while, but you must be referring to the autopsy. The state of the brain after life is no longer present, how else could they know the weight of the brain. That is what they say they found. OK

,

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

No, her brain was liquified long before the feeding tube was removed. The autopsy only confirmed it.

[lekatt]

@Monty

This isn’t right, IMHO. We’re not allowed to take lekatt to task for his outrageous assertions in this thread and now he’s playing the “Well, what do you think happened?” game. I say it’s a game because it’s already been posted what happened to the poor woman. Science is not Magic. And slander/libel of Mr. Schiavo isn’t honest. He is not here to debate.

I made no assertions, merely showed a link to a skeptical site that made the “assertion” if one was made. Neither did I slander in this post. I have done nothing wrong in this post or any other. But I will leave you to your thoughts.

Socrates said: “Wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.” Something like that. They killed him for basically asking questions the elite couldn’t answer.

[Der_Trihs]

This isn’t some grey area case, where some new treatment or a rallying of the body’s own resources might conceivably have brought her back. Her brain was ruined well beyond healing. Judging from the descriptions, even if we knew how to perfectly regenerate brain tissue Schiavo the person likely would still have been erased.

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

No, her brain was liquified long before the feeding tube was removed. The autopsy only confirmed it.

More like let them see the details; the damage was huge enough they could see it just fine with a brain scan.

[Monty]

@lekatt

Neither did I slander in this post. I have done nothing wrong in this post or any other.

You accused her husband of hiring lackey doctors so he could murder her.

[Mr.Miskatonic]

@lekatt

Socrates said: “Wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.” Something like that.

I’m fairly certain that Socrates didn’t intend his comments to become an excuse to make invalid comparisons or pretend that painfully obvious things were not true.

[tomndebb]

@lekatt

This quote came from a skeptical site. I would think you would like it.

However, you quoted one snippet out of context and it does not have any bearing on the issue of Terry Schiavo at the end of her life because in the case of Ms. Schiavo–as you have been told, repeatedly–the actual grey matter inside her skull had atrophied to the point where most if it was gone, replaced by fluid.
Here is a comparative MRI of a normal brain and Ms. Schiavo’s brain. Note that three years before her death, her brain had already atrophied. At the time of her death there was only about half of the grey matter of a woman her size. Specific regions of the brain were no longer present in pretty much the same way that muscle in the extremities of paraplegics disappears after years of not being used (particularly in the days before therapy was routinely performed for the specific purpose of maintaining muscle mass).

Now, since you continue to post the same nonsense while ignoring actual facts, you are now through in this thread. You may not be trolling for attention, but your actions are indistinguishable from a poster who was trolling.

Do not post again to this thread.

[ /Moderating ]

[Irishman]

lekatt said:

What was it dissolved in, some sort of acid? How did this happen?

I realize you are no longer able to post in this thread, but I did want to try to answer your question. Unfortunately, my google-fu is weak. But I did find this:

Cells, Tissues, and Disease

Organization is the process whereby a layer of granulation tissue removes aseptic, absorbable material such as dead tissue, fibrin, or a surgical sponge. In essence, this is a large-scale scavenging operation, and correspondingly the cells that do most of the work are macrophages.

What I take that to say is that anytime the body has non-infectious dead tissue, macrophages (white blood cells) digest the material and reabsorb it into the bloodstream to be processed again. I suppose a doctor might elaborate/correct, but the essence is that the body has a natural process for dealing with dead tissue. Rather than leave it in place to become septic, it absorbs it - digests it and reuses the materials. Muscle atrophy in parapalegics is common. The muscles no longer get used, die out, and get absorbed away. Same thing with dead brain tissue.