CHARGES OF JUNK SCIENCE:
While we at American Council on Science and Health have been determined to remain on the sidelines of the raging national debate about the fate of Terri Schiavo (this is largely a legal and ethical issue, not a scientific one), we cannot remain silent about the outrageous misrepresentation of scientific facts about this case that has been occurring in the past ten days.
The medical reality of Ms. Schiavo’s case is this: She has been in what is medically referred to as a “permanent vegetative state” for the past 15 years, ever since her heart temporarily stopped (probably due to the severe effects of an eating disorder), depriving her brain of oxygen. Brain scans indicate that her cerebral cortex ceased functioning — probably just after she experienced cardiac arrest in 1990. Ms. Schiavo’s CAT scan shows massive shrinking of the brain, and her EEG is flat. Physicians confirm that there is no electrical activity coming from her brain. While the family video repeatedly shown on television suggests otherwise, her non-functioning cortex precludes cognition, including any ability to interact or communicate with people or show any signs of awareness. Dozens of experts over the years who have examined Ms. Schiavo agree that there is no hope of her recovering — even though her body, face and eyes (if she is given food and hydration) might continue to move for decades to come.
Those are the harsh facts. . . .
Yesterday, there was another public challenge to Ms. Schiavo’s well-established diagnosis: Florida governor Jeb Bush announced that a “very renowned neurologist,” Dr. William Cheshire, had concluded that Terri had been misdiagnosed and that she was really only in a state of “minimal consciousness” rather than a persistent vegetative state. He used this “new diagnosis” to argue that “this new information raises serious concerns and warrants immediate action.”
As it turns out, Dr. Cheshire is not “renowned” as a neurologist — his limited publications focus on areas including headache pain and his opposition to stem cell research. Dr. Cheshire never conducted a physical examination of Ms. Schiavo, nor did he do neurological tests. . . . Let’s call tripe when tripe is served.
Ouch.
UPDATE: James Taranto links this report and observes:
Reading over the report on Schiavo prepared in 2003 by guardian ad litem Jay Wolfson (link in PDF) helps make clear why this last effort will not succeed. Many physicians have backed the PVS diagnosis, and the courts are unlikely to give much weight to an eighth or ninth opinion at this late stage.
The 38-page report is by and large a persuasive document, showing that the Florida courts did not lightly reach the conclusion that Mrs. Schiavo should die.
I certainly don’t know Ms. Schiavo’s condition, as I’m not a doctor and haven’t evaluated her — not that that’s stopping others. But I think it’s absurd to claim, as many are, that a cabal of liberal judges wants to murder Terri Shiavo because it is — in Peggy Noonan’s absurdly over-the-top phrase — “half in love with death.” To be fair, Noonan aims that phrase at others, really. But I think that many on the right have succumbed to hysteria here. This is a tragic situation, and it’s been turned into a circus.
UPDATE: Reader Jean Tuttle emails: “Mr. Reynolds, I worked as a nurse in ICUs and ERs. I have no idea what kind of brain damage Mrs. Schiavo has ,but I find it hard to believe her EEG is flat.The patients I saw with flat EEGs couldn’t breathe on their own, couldn’t move or make any sound. As I said before I don’t have any idea the amount of brain damage Mrs. Schiavo has, but I would bet the EEG isn”t flat. I think there is so much disinformation coming out of both sides of this ,that it is impossible to know what the facts are.”
That last part is certainly true.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Perhaps this column by Neal Boortz is an answer to Peggy Noonan: “Where do your concerns truly lie, with the eternal soul of Terri Schiavo, or with her earthly body?”
Sissy Willis has more thoughts on hysteria.
MORE: Gerard van der Leun says that Noonan was making a literary allusion that I missed:
Over the top? Perhaps, but more in the line of a literary allusion:
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,— Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
And, as such, not really that much beside the point.
Hmm. I had forgotten that — I haven’t read that poem since high school — but I’m not sure that the allusion, if that’s what it is, fits Noonan’s message.
And reader Gerald Dearing emails with this observation, which makes a suitable capper for this post: “You know the debate has truly entered the realm of the surreal when Neal Boortz weighs in with a spirituality argument!”
Indeed.