The autopsy results won’t change any minds.
This was never about facts. It was about ideology.
I think you’re right. That’s always been the basis of this issue.
How sad that this woman’s death was used as a tool.
Tool for what?
A tool for political gain by people like Rick Santorum and Bill Frist.
You ask this rather than admit you were wrong.
Instead of apologizing for your slanders, you ask how she could have been a tool.
The previous poster had it in one. She was a tool for Frist, Santorum, and the rest who used Terri as a way to beat their chest and appease the people currently holding their leashes.
Check the posting dates, please. Waiting 11 days and then starting up again with personal antagonism is not helpful to the discussion.
(I somehow doubt that there will be any fruitful discussion, but I want any discussion that occurs to sink no lower than the level of dueling factoids, not attacks on posters.)
While I think the comments I made were salient in light of Terri’s autopsy, I’ll refrain from further requests for Lekatt to put up or shut up.
Here are some cites to verify (yet again) what you and the rest of us already said, ad nauseum. They indicate the complete hypocrisy and selfishness of the “champions of life”, followed up with various quotes that condemn them for it:
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=202
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php
Andrew Sullivan writes:
It’s rare that we get an objective resolution of a fiercely disputed matter. We have now. And it ain’t pretty.
Perusing the right-wing blogs this evening, one is struck by their eerie silence on this story.
It’s in the autopsy report, which is also available online. Your point, as far as it goes, is not wrong–you can’t predict clinical state from an amount of lost brain tissue. But keep in mind that the half of Terri’s brain that was left was not healthy brain, nor was it sufficiently spread out in a way that would have allowed meaningful life to continue.
I really have no idea what people were expecting to see. There was just about zero new significant information from this autopsy; it only lent credence to the medical facts that were not in dispute by anyone worthy of being taken seriously on the subject.
There was no new material in the autopsy, except for two items, in my opinion. The statement she was blind, and the statement there was no evidence of an eating disorder. They didn’t address her bone fractures directly, a little disappointed on that point. Also disappointed they had no reason or cause for her being in the condition she was in. All I heard was heart stoppage. Well there was a reason and a cause for what happened. That reason I guess shall remain a mystery for now.
People have been known to function well on half a brain or less.
http://www.alternativescience.com/no_brainer.htm
I was not close enough for an opinion, but many said her eyes followed the movement of people’s hands. Being around blind people you do notice they don’t move their eyes much. The part of the brain controlling the sight varies, it is not always the exact place.
http://www.aleroy.com/info02.htm
Now, as I saw it, there were three basic sides to the issue.
Those who believed her life was finished and wanted her dead.
Those who didn’t believe her life was finished and wanted her to live longer.
and
Those who objected to the brutally cruel method of her murder.
I don’t think the sides have changed any due to the autopsy.
Each person must face their own decisions.
I have no desire to take this any further than this explanation of how I see it.
I am content to let “God sort it out”. A famous quote by a minor Pope.
This is an incredibly misleading statement in the news stories on the subject. There is no evidence of an eating disorder because there is nothing about an eating disorder that one would expect to be evident at this point. It isn’t like something should be there but isn’t. So this is not new information.
There is, in fact, an incredible amount of evidence that Terri had an eating disorder.
–She had lost a large amount of weight.
–Some of her friends suspected she had an eating disorder.
–She had recently seen a gynecologist because she stopped having periods, which happens with anorexia and bullemia.
–There are not many other viable reasons why an otherwise healthy 26-year-old woman would suddenly develop a potassium of 2.0.
Yes, the evidence is circumstantial, but there really isn’t a good way to put this together other than an eating disorder. Considering how common such disorders are in young women, the only reason to believe that this wasn’t the cause of Terri’s initial insult is that you want to believe it was something else.
I have pointed out elsewhere why this is irrelevant to Terri’s state. (See the corresponding pit thread.)
lekatt, what the autopsy report shows is that there is no evidence her collapse was caused by anything OTHER than an eating disorder and the circumstancial evidence which exists all supports bulemia, especially the loss of potassium.
The other headline is that there is no evidence whatever of trauma, strangulation or other abuse by Michael Schiavo.
Your “three basic sides” is a complete strawman. The “side” you conveniently forgot was the side of those who wanted to support Terri’s own wishes not to be kept artificially alive as a vegetable. The only thing this case EVER really boiled down to was whether individuals have the right to refuse medical treatment. Terri Schiavo didn’t want that tube and the government had no right to try to force her to accept it.
I thought the ME showed no evidence of old (or recent) fractures.
(heard on NPR-press conference with the ME)
How is that not proven re: broken bones? 
Lack of evidence of an eating disorder does not mean that one did not exist, as has been explained. It means that there was no permanent structural damage(evidence) to her various organs at the time of autopsy. (unless one counts the brain damage, but that was a d/t anoxia–not a direct result of bulemia etc).
All I can say is, what do you want as evidence? How and what would prove the case to you or reassure you?
I have heard of last ditchers and all, but this entire story has entered into surreality.
Since this is GD, and I stink at GD, I’ll be quiet now.
Let’s be very clear about what was said and what was not by the M.E.
He did NOT say that there was no evidence of an eating disorder. He did say he couldn’t conclusively say, 15 years later, that an eating disorder was THE cause of the cardiac arrest she suffered. It seems like he felt that was a definite possibility, but since there were no admissions by here, and no actual wintessed bulemic events, that it was conjecture, and he doesn’t want to deal with conjecture.
He DID rule out any signs of abuse or broken bones.
He DID rule out the possibility that she was tracking anything visually (her visual cortex was gone).
He DID rule out the possibility of any improvement of her condition.
He DID rule out the possibility of trying to hand-feed her after the tube was removed prolonging the death process. As a matter of fact, he said there was a high probability of it killing her if they would have been allowed to try.
He DID rule out the possibility of morphine hastening or affecting her death in any way - contrary to yet another baseless accusation.
He DID show that all the objective medical experts and all the courts were 100% correct in their assessment of the condition of her brain.
The utter lack of cortex DOES rule out the possibility that she felt or was aware of anything.
To add to DoctorJ’s post above about why we wouldn’t expect an adult who suddenly developed a 650 gm brain to have function (in re: to lekatt and John Mace). Yes, Rasmussen Syndrome is a defined entity, yes hemispherectomies are done very rarely, and yes, often children with devastating injuries can lead relatively normal or even normal lives. In fact, I have a copy in front of me right now of Lewin’s 1980 Science article entitled “Is Your Brain Really Necessary” about Lorber’s book, wherein he describes a math student with a measured IQ of 126 and a unilateral cortical rim by CT secondary to untreated congenital or neonatal hydrocephalus.
Notice the common theme in these cases: children. Beyond what the good Doctor says above, as most of us know, children have a huge ability to rebuild brain function that is mostly lost by before adolescence. This includes remapping even major structural areas of the brain to other functions. Some areas of the brain will still do this in adulthood, but on a much, much more limited scale (that’s why blind people are said to feel or hear better).
If any adult out there were to suddenly lose 50% of their brain, no matter which part of the brain, no matter what scenario you can imagine, the consequences would be incredibly profound. Even massive ischemic strokes usually affect less of the brain than this and just think about the damage spectrum affiliated with large strokes.
I’m angered by the “lekatt way” most of the TV media spun the autopsy results: giving “equal time” to all those Terri-hating truth-haters who utterly deny the plain facts of the autopsy to insist that essentially there was nothing permanently wrong with Terri and that her own wishes should have been denied – for their sakes!
That’s evil for you.
Well summarized. Thanks.
You forgot to mention that she apparently drank an insane amount of caffinated tea all the time (far more than I can even imagine drinking). Constantly flushing your system with that much liquid is not a great way to retain vital nutrients, and that much caff is not necessarily a great idea either, particularly for someone that lost that much weight so quickly so recently.
No doubt some think Michael slapped the potassium out of her.