By now, most “Alas” readers know that Terri Schiavo’s autopsy has been released; you can read it here (pdf link). For an excellent summary of the report’s findings, I recommend this post at Abstract Appeal.
The most interesting finding, to me, is the finding that Schiavo was blind. How many tens of thousands of people saw the video of Schiavo appearing to follow a balloon with her eyes, and concluded that she must be conscious? How many times did “pro-“Schaivo folks who had viewed the video say, in response to an argument or a piece of evidence contradicting their opinion, “I know what I saw, and that woman is conscious”?
To some extent these people were fooled by tricky editing. But they were also fooled by the human tendency to anthromorphize – to assume that if something has a face, then we can read thoughts behind that face. That there are thoughts behind the face to read. That everything with a face is, in ways that matter, just like us. (You see this in the abortion debate a lot, as increasingly sophisticated ultrasound images of fetuses are seen by pro-lifers as proof positive, while pro-choicers like me find them beautiful and wonderful for eager expecting parents, but irrelevant to the freedom vs. forced childbirth debate.)
Sometimes – just sometimes – it makes more sense to trust in science than to trust in what our eyes tell us.
The finding that Schiavo was blind also raises the possibility that she was misdiagnosed with PVS; at least one study has found that people who are visually impaired are the most likely to be misdiagnosed with PVS. However, the extreme damage to her brain (confirmed by the autopsy), combined with all the other evidence from before Schiavo’s body died, makes it overwhelmingly clear that Schiavo was, in fact, incapable of any cognition at all. 50% of her brain was simply gone, and what remained was in bad shape. So despite the blindness, I’m as confident as I can be that the PVS diagnosis was correct.
There is no autopsy evidence of trauma associated with abuse. In fact, the autopsy report seems more certain of this finding than any other. This doesn’t absolutely prove that she wasn’t abused – nothing can prove a negative – but it’s notable since the main evidence cited by the Terri-was-abused camp up to this point has been claims that her bones were damaged, and that claim has now definitively been proved an error.
There is no autopsy evidence that Schiavo suffered from bulimia, although as The J Train points out, it’s not clear that bulimia fifteen years in the past would leave any evidence for an autopsy to discover.
There’s more – as I said, see Matt’s post at Abstract Appeal for a fuller summary.
I was so struck, too, that she was blind. “Cortically blind.” Her eyes functioned, but there was no brain tissue in there to receive and interpret the images.
Like so many, I was moved by the videos that seemed to show that she was seeing, tracking….not so, we now know. So how much did we, did her parents, interpret into their experience? How many assumptions?
I read the autopsy report. A lot of the systems in her body were diseased or failing. Her body was falling apart.
She said she didn’t want to live this way. According to the court which considered all the evidence. Indeed, who would? For another 40 years, if she could have lasted that long? If there was any awareness in there at all, how much of a nightmare was this?
It certainly seems as though the more vociferous activists on the save-terri side of things owe Mr. Schiavo an apology, to say the least.
I remember a lady who had this mare who gave birth to the most beautiful palomino foal, well while it was barly a few weeks old the foal slipped on the concrete backwards and hit it’s head. as a result it was blind, and was permenent according to the vet the eyes and optic nerves were intact, the blindness was result of brain damage to the optic areas of the brain.
so you can become blind due to brain damage, I have read that you can stroke out and become blind, if you stroke out where the vision is assimilated and played back.
and susan I am with you, if she had any awareness of anything it was a living hell.
RR
What got me the most angry was Bill Frist telling America it was time to put it all behind us.
OK, so if she had been provably not in a PVS, would he also asked us to put this behind us aand move on?
Nope. And neither should we. We were right, and they were wrong. We can’t just let that drop. Not with all of the allegations of abuse, the diagnoses by epople who’d watched a 1 hour edited video, and the fake doctors chiming in.
I’m hoping someone with a Lexis Nexis subscription makes a good list of the pundit crowd commenting on hoiw they were sure we had to save Terry, and how she was not in a PVS. We have to hold these people accountable.
The experts on NPR “All Things Considered” said she was blind and probably deaf a long time before she died.
Its amazing too to see the Family Research Council and their ilk (won’t do them the service of linking… :), is spinning this that the results were inconclusive!
It was pretty conclusive that she had barely any brain left
It was pretty conclusive that she was blind
It was pretty conclusive that she was in a PVS
It was pretty conclusive that there were no signs of abuse…
they kind of miss all that…
but then say that there wasn’t evidence of bulima so the husband is wrong.
Why does anyone believe the FRC and their ilk on ANYTHING?
And the parents have said they want to sue the husband. With the help of the ameriban, they’ll hound that poor man for the rest of his life.
One thing seems certain, there is little love or compassion on either side of the debate for those who disagree. One has to ask what the dire need is for one to feel that they are correct?
The treatment of Terry, that is the allowing her to die “of natural causes”? is very sad. If it was determined that she was all but dead, why not kill her? To claim that anyone knows what another is feeling is ludicrous. To deny food or water as a means of “natural”? death is horrific. Have the guts to do the deed and kill the person, it is cowardice to take “hands off” so no one is to blame. A short time ago, some Dr’s. believed that infants CNS were not fully developed and memory was incomplete so that surgery was done without anesthesia, we know differently.
I do not know if she was in a PVS or not, I do not know for sure if my belief in a soul is correct or not, and neither do you. I do know that my perspective demands that I acknowledge that you are uniquely created, and are worthy of loving.
She was more then likely unaware of her own life, dying was probably a relief. Her parents are alive and hurting as is her husband, don’t they deserve better for the fight they gave for someone they both loved? There is a vision of the debate that is far more disturbing then Terry’s life/death and that is the debate itself.
I’m glad we’ve gotten the autopsy. I don’t dispute any of its’ findings.
I was one of those who opposed the removal of the tube initially. (I’m disabled and opposed the removal on very different grounds than the religious right–see an earlier Amp post or Mary Johnson’s article at http://theraggededge.com in February, that explains the disability rights opposition much better than I ever could.
The only positives that came out of this business is opening up the debate on subjects that we’d all rather wouldn’t occur, and the need for anyone passionate on either side to get a living will *written, notarized, and signed.*
If you are, like me, not a believer in conscious souls, then it is absolutely clear that Ms. Schiavo had no consciousness whatsoever. If you are a believer in conscious souls, then it would depend on whether the soul is attached to the heart beat, the brain stem, or the cerebral cortex. Presumably, Catholic theology hold the soul to be attached to the heart beat (or simply to living human cells). Therefore, while presumably everyone now agrees that she had no ability to consciously control her body or to directly sense the outside world (things I think we all agree you need a brain to do), the distinction between a locked-in person without sensation and a person in a PVS is not meaningful to someone who believes in a conscious soul, particularly not if conscious souls have some form of sensory awareness. I think that is a large part of why the other side is unmoved by this news.
Also, while we can each guess how we would each feel being locked-in, and we can (obviously) make uneducated guesses about how a person we have never met would have guessed that they would feel about being locked-in, it seems very silly to assume that we can know what someone we have never met would actually feel about being locked-in once they actually were.
Obviously, since Ms. Schiavo was in an extreme PVS and not locked-in, this is irrelevant, but I do think that the “If she could sense anything, it must have been a living hell,” comments have vanishingly little basis, and are closely tied to the reasons that many disabled rights activists opposed removal of her feeding tube.
Charles, you make some very valid points. The existence of the Spirit and soul, are for the believer not dependant on any part of the body; hence the belief of the risen body having sensory experiences of its own. It is conjecture, as we who live on Earth can only go by the religious teachings on the eternal life. The good thing is, we will all find out in the end, I hope and pray we are loved as was Terry, but that our transition is less fraught with angst and bitterness.
I am very glad the right decision was made, I am very glad Terry’s wishes were upheld, and I am very glad we don’t have to listen to a chorus of “I told you so’s” from the Right. I pretty much ignored the video and that attempt to turn “aaaaaaa waaaaa” into “I want to live” (when it could just as easily have been “I want to die,” assuming it was anything at all.
Unfortunately, not every right-wing screwball is going to take the autopsy report for an answer. One of them has already looked at the report of half her brain being gone, came up with an epiliptic high school graduate who had half her brain removed, and used this example to assert that Terri was not blind. As if “half a brain” could only mean one particular assortment of brain parts destroyed, of which the vision processing center is never a part. Crazies.
I’m hoping someone with a Lexis Nexis subscription makes a good list of the pundit crowd commenting on hoiw they were sure we had to save Terry, and how she was not in a PVS. We have to hold these people accountable.
I’m sorry to blow my own horn, but I have tried to do just that here, with more discussion here.
I hope someone apologizes to the probate judge who’s probably still getting death threats.
The epileptic who had part of her brain removed, had it done when she was very young. At that time, the site of brain functions are elastic and can adapt and move. At Teri Schiavo’s age, however, it would not have been possible. Her brain was a fully solidified, adult brain.
And now comes word that John Ellis Bush, the Governor of FL is going to have a criminal investigation opened into whether Michael Schiavo deliberately failed to call 911 for 70 minutes after he was alerted to his wife’s condition, 15 years ago.
Words cannot express the contempt I have for him.
Judge Greer received a high honor recently from his local bar association. He has received death threats. I’m certain that he’s armed. It’s a sad business when this is necessary, but this is one of the risks of being a judge.
The guy just did his job. We need to support that, and him.
This new claim by good ole Jeb Bush makes my blood boil. It isn’t bad enough that he and all his other bandwagon-riders don’t have the guts to apologize for making the living victims of this case hell on earth, but now he’s going to hop on his bandwagon and trump up MORE accusations? You know…on the day my late fiancee passed away, do you think I made sure I stopped and looked at a clock to make sure I knew what time it was, just in case the governor of my state one day decided to pull a “time window” case against me? Sorry, I was a little busy on the phone with 911 and giving them details to notice what time it was. As George Felos has stated, this is just yet another attempt to stir up controversy where there is none.
Yes, this Jeb Bush thing is outrageous. I don’t think I can express it better than Dave, so I’ll leave it at that.
Throughout this ordeal I’ve felt that Terri’s family was small-minded and hateful. I’m sorry Rock, but I must react to your statement: “I hope and pray we are loved as was Terry” by saying… NO THANK YOU. I would never hope to be loved in the way her family loved her– selfishness under the guise of protection, spitting venom both personally and through their representatives. They would not believe the autopsy result if her brain was a pile of dust, which basically was the case. Thank goodness the courts had the sense and strength to let her die.
It does not surprise me in the least these selfrighteous delusional windbags refuse to face facts that they don’t like.
After all, their leader is GW Shrub who has the galling arrogance considering the record of his administration to deny they have ever made any mistake no matter how small.
I think in all honesty if Frist ever eyed the oval office he can kiss that dream goodbye… between abuse of power in the nuclear option fallderall and this on top of his other ridiculous nonsense he should be institutionalized if he thinks he could ever win.
In the same institution that anyone who would vote for him belongs IMHO.
Why is it important to show these selfserving clowns as clearly wrong?
Because they turned due process on its head.
Everyone is to have EQUAL rights… so are they gonna mobilize Congress and have Shrub fly into Washington DC for every issue of every citizen?
Clearly only for Saint Terri.
A woman whose only claim to fame is the desperate delusion and unmitigated gall of her parents to slander honest people like Judge Greer, Michael Schiavo and others, causing them to receive death threats and legitimately fear for their lives, to have their lives turned into technicolor insanity as they dragged out what should have been a clear cut case of spousal rights and prerogatives for fifteen long years.
The parents want to sue Michael Schiavo? Let them! Then he files a counter suit for $500 million, naming as co-defendants Randall Terry, Jeb Bush, GW Shrub, all the sanctimonious selfrighteous and arrogantly illinformed groups and individuals who spoke against them, slandering their names and causing their lives to be at risk as well as their sanity, Fox News, Sean Hannity, Pat Robertson, Dobson, Limbaugh, Scarborough, Coulter and the entire crew.
Let the court make them put their money where their mouths were and show there is a price for fraudulently whipping up a murderous (or would be murderous witch hunt).
Let them sue… if I were Michael Schiavo, the judge and the rest I would up the ante like these zealots never imagined.
And someone asked if Frist would be saying ‘move on’ if the autopsy had supported his side as thoroughly as it supported the side of Michael Schiavo. Absolutely not… he would not stop screaming until the judge, husband and everyone else on that side were publicly drawn and quartered and anyone with an IQ above 80 knows that full well.
And as for the so-called ‘disabled issue’ here, there WAS NO disabled issue. Can you say ‘you were pawns of the parents’ media machine’? I knew you could. No one was saying take a sentient disabled person and starve them to death except the demagogues on the parents’ side and so many ignorant manipulated disabled people fell obediently into line like a row of wrenches or other TOOLS. And before you whine and rant and rave at me for being a disabled-hater, I AM disabled. But unlike the disabled folks who jumped on the Save Saint Terri bandwagon based on a claim if they didn’t they would be next I am not a certifiable idiot.
No one with an ounce of sense would see any legitimate link there. WAKE UP… you were DUPED … realize it.. face it… and don’t let it happen again!
PLEASE!
That family is guilty of fabricating that edited video and outright lying and fabricating to keep their propaganda fraud going and causing great expense, harm and risk of harm to others. I for one would like to see anyone significantly involved on that side tried and convicted in criminal court for their crimes.
That’s my take on it.. let them continue to deny reality from a prison cell with all their worldly possessions transferred to those who they harmed.
As for the suffering of starvation/dehydration if we were not such amazingly inconsistent hypocrites as a society we would have just said ok, she is going to die, and then put her out of her misery in the most quick and humane manner available instead of prolonging things and perpetuating the circus.
Get a clue, America, will you? Sheesh, no wonder you elected this nincompoop twice!
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beezus: I’m sorry Rock, but I must react to your statement: “I hope and pray we are loved as was Terry”? by saying… NO THANK YOU.
I dunno, Beezus: I would hope for a partner as loving and devoted as Michael Schiavo.
I’ll tell you right now that at the end of life the last thing I would want is the most easily lead, or subverted of my family members, who could actually believe associating themselves with those like that scum Randall Terry would end well ….making *any* decisions about my life. Jeb Bush is so far over the line with this that it is unreal…Did his personal Deity tell him to file the suit?
So they say God givith life, and God takith away. I am not athiest but agnostic. Since she was still alive at the time her tube was removed, then maybe it wasn’t her time?
“Since she was still alive at the time her tube was removed, then maybe it wasn’t her time?”
Terri was kept alive by extraordinary means. The feeding tube was life support since there was no alternative method to feed her. In fact, the autopsy did show that food or water by mouth after the tube was removed would not have sustained her life. I apply the same standards here as I would to any other situation in which a brain dead (or terminally ill) person is kept alive using life support equipment. It is common for the family to make a decision to remove that sort of equipment and allow the patient to die naturally.
I think a lot of the emotion stemmed from the fact that Terri’s eyes were often open and her facial expression was serene. It was easy to associate her appearance with a state of mind or awareness when in fact that was absent.
If I may seem a bit harsh for a moment, we are all about appearance. This would never have gotten the press if Terri’s appearance was unpleasantly slack-jawed, drooly and sad. She had the right look and also very cute pictures from before her collapse. That’s what really sparked and sustained public attention to the moral and ethical questions. (That, and the reality-TV-like family drama that went along with it.)
Beezus, your comments are well taken and if you look at the media’s fascination w/ missing white women, you will see it confirmed from yet another angle.
“If I may seem a bit harsh for a moment, we are all about appearance. ”
No kidding. I think that’s also why the Martha Stewart case got wayyyy more play in the press than the Lyn Stewart case did, despite the latter being much more important from a legal rights angle.
I am always amazed by folks that have such a self assured read on things like Neal’s. I have always been envious of others who just know for sure what the events and minds of others were about… I personally am frequently confused. (It is one of the worst traits that I see in GW, that self assuredness, there doesn’t seem to be any doubt in him.) I have been cursed with a mind that sees a lot of gray, it makes things harder to distinguish, like other peoples motives. I also have this fundamental problem with seeing people as whole or not, disabled or complete. My beliefs tell me that none of us are complete, that independence and ability are illusions. That we are called to care for one another and together this assemblage of brokenness, we form something more, something complete. If I have been blessed with a talent, the reason is so it can be shared with someone who will benefit from it. Often folks like Terri give us the opportunity to see just how disabled and incomplete we really are, it seems that Terri had an awesome calling, an opportunity to teach us how to love.
The horrendous pain that has resulted from an opportunity to show compassion is just a symptom of the fear and suffering many carry in their hearts everyday. The inability to respect life and the fear of the ending of life are tragic. I do not see the villainy that many report here. I see deeply troubled people trying to deal with something that has for some crazy reason gotten bigger then any one ever thought possible. I refuse to believe that all the folks afraid of losing Terri are evil or mean people. It is so very human to get caught up in emotional events, and forget that is the very gift that marks us as human. (As ee cummings said, humanity I love you for you are forever putting the secret of life in the back of your pants, forgetting it is there and sitting down upon it.) Why not send a card or note to one of the most heinous offenders on your list of “evil people”? in this ordeal and tell them they are loved and it is over for Terri? Why not tell Michael S. that his devotion didn’t go unnoticed? Why not tell her parents that you can see what a terrible pain letting go seems to be for them and that we are present in that suffering? Bringing law suites and calling names is not about Terri, but about our own selfish motives which are no better (or worse) then those we seem to be railing against. (You say you want a revolution?) Many of us despaired at Terri’s treatment; however more hate is not the answer, I am called to love the, “scum Randall Terry,”? and that is what I will do. (That and work my tail off for the next elections.)
Blessings.
Terry Schiavo, collapse due to lack of oxygen in brains.
TS used caffeine on daily basis. Caffeine causes rhabdomyolysis when od:d, the mechanism is based on the rise of adrenaline levels, which control the natrium exchange pumps of skeletal muscle cells, to maintain optimal chemical balance of muscles for fast action.
When overdosed, various exchange pumps accelerate so much, that it causes hyponatremia, when extracellular natrium is being pumped in the cells. Intracellular natrium binds extracellular water in order to adjust te concentration to match that of extracellular fluid. The cell bulges until it breaks.
Myoglobin is released from the cells, and broken to iron and porphyrins. Porphyrins cause an uncontrolled acceleration of HPA-axis, controlling the release of stress hormones, and ends in an adrenergic storm, with heart or brain related incident as cause of death.
When caffeine is used on daily basis, it causes caffeinism to some 10-20% of users. The condition may advance very slowly, it can take years before any symptoms can be diagnosed, and the condition is always misdiagnosed to psyche related condition like depression, anxiety, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, manic depression, psychosis, schizophrenia etc.
In my mind, TS may have developed her eating disorder because of caffeinism, and that the eating disorder made her progressively more vulnerable to the effects of caffeine. Malnutrition makes the body use itself as food, and this releases more and more porfyrins in the blood, and stress hormone levels are kept up on 24/7 basis.
The situation with stress hormones affect the smooth muscles surrounding blood vessels, causing them to shrink, which elevates blood pressure, and inhibits blood circulation in brains. One cup of coffee means 30% less bloodflow in brains, and also less nutrients and oxygen. When this goes on for a long period of time, it kills brains slowly, starting from the tiniest vessels.
When a person lives with this kind of situation, where cell death releases lots of porphyrins in the blood, he is a walking time bomb, that can turn into a vegetable in a couple of minutes. Almost any minor stimulus to stress hormones can trigger the adrenergic storm.
I have experianced this myself. I lived with caffeinism for more than two decades, and experianced a couple of hypertensive crisis situations, and have studied caffeine about 1½ years extensively. I am complitely healed now, about 2 years after my caffeine cessation.
The mechanism that destroys the brains is based on adrenaline/natrium connection.
Adrenaline accelerates the natrium pumps of skeletal muscle cells, leeching natrium from the blood. The brain, however, has normal natrium concentration, and because brains cannot get rid of natrium to lower the concentration to same level with blood, the natrium in the brains bind more water from blood, the brains swell, and are slowly exploded to pieces.
When the higher parts of brains are destroyed, and if the brain stem functions, the natrium level is restored as soon as the adrenaline level sinks.
When liver and kidneys have cleaned excess porfyrines from blood, the cramping of respiratory muscles ends, and breathing starts again. Porphyrines are known to cause cramping of smooth muscles, and create a “boa constrictor syndrome” by tightening the rsp muscles every time one breathes out. The sympotm worsens in warmth, and can cause death by suffocation during sleep. I know this from own experience.