The Whole Truth: Official Report of Terri Schiavo's Guardian ad Litem

Here's a link to the Official Report to Governor Jeb Bush and the 6th Judicial Circuit from Terri Schiavo's Guardian ad Litem.

http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/WolfsonReport.pdf

It's a 38 page pdf file, and contains the unvarnished truth about all of the medical and legal facts.

Among the more eye-opening facts are:

Terri Schiavo's parents admit to the court that they would not withdraw life support, even if they knew it to be her wish.


Her parents also concede that she is in a persistent vegatative state.


Anyway, read, get informed. Know the facts so that you can cut through the lies like a knife through warm butter.

They know that she is in a persistent vegatative state. They say if you love somebody, you must be able to let them go. Talk about fucked up.

Propping up and wheeling around her corpse, and talking to it as though it was listening.

Eating disorders are often tied to family of origin and control issues.

I wanna beleeve Tom Delay.

She kan talk.

get it right :silly:

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

And they know it.

being floated by the MSM. I feel more sorrow now for Terri and Michael than I had before I read the report.

I'm still not sure why Terri's parents are being so vindictive, or why they insist on the position they hold. At one point it seems it could have been $$, but that's all gone now. I guess it must be religious based. I can't see any other excuse.

So very sad for everyone involved!

This fiasco has diverted attention from war protests and Mr DeLay's considerable problems. Notice that DeLay was the spark plug for this in the house.

--IMM

Among other things, it appears to dispel the myth that Michael Schiavo never tried to rehabilitate Terri.

Based on the timeline in the report, it seems like what really happened was that once Michael won the malpractice lawsuit, his parents assumed that he wanted the money for himself, and that that was the only reason he decided it was time to let Terri go. If you believed that about someone, I suppose you would start to see him as an evil grasping bastard who must be stopped at all costs.

However, possibly the most depressing paragraph in there is the one describing the parents' attitude toward Terri's treatment, in which they basically insist that because they, as the report puts it, "derive some joy from Terri's being alive," even if Terri is long past deriving joy from anything, they are going to keep her body alive as long as medical technology can do it.

According to the report, during one of the hearings someone offered the parents a scenario in which Terri contracts diabetes, then gangrene, and has to have all her limbs amputated. Would you want her kept alive as a brain-dead quadruple amputee? Yes, say the Schindlers. OK, suppose she's a brain-dead diabetic quadruple amputee and she has heart failure. Would you want open-heart surgery performed on her? Yes, say the Schindlers.

Wow.

What this points out is that right now, nobody is really acting in Terri's best interests. The husband wants to get on with his life. The parents want their daughter kept alive under any circumstances, even if that's not what she would want. The Republicans want an opportunity of sticking it to the Democrats. The only people who really tried to act in Terri's interest are the court-appointed guardians and even there, the report finds evidence of bias on the part of some of them.

God preserve us all from entering into Terri's condition. In Dubya's America, it sucks to be helpless.

The Plaid Adder

they repeated the discredited "nurse" affidavits that were rejected out of hand at the trial. Two so-called nurses (more likely nurses' aides) claim the husband made disparaging remarks and neglected his wife.

in the case. I don't know who is paying her, but she's very busy.

sides. I don't think that the husband is some kind of abusive monster, nor do I think Terry's family is intent on torturing her.

My take on the video of her responding to her mother is that it is a genuine reaction. I've been around people who have brain damage and it is different than a coma. However, an MRI that showed no brain activity would convince me that it was all reflexes. One hasn't been done.

I don't think we should be starving people to death. If it was a respirator, I'd say pull the plug. But not starving to death, because I see a very slippery slope toward legalized euthanasia and the courts or legislature deciding what is quality of life. I've worked with developmentally disabled children that can't feed themselves. Should we stop feeding them, too? After all, what quality of life does a person with an IQ too low to be measured have? I worry that we could get to this point, which is where the nazis started their genocidal efforts-with the developmentally disabled and the handicapped. Or with seniors that have alzheimers.

The husband views this as torturing a woman who wouldn't want to live like this (who would?). The parents and siblings don't want to lose their loved one. The parents, being republican types, are fighting dirty and lobbing unfair accusations toward the husband, but that doesn't mean they are bad people for wanting to save their loved one.

I hope the federal court rules to put the tube back in for now, and that the judge orders an MRI to be done before any final decision is made.

respirator? They're both life support.

That you are happy that congress has violated the constitution to get a photo op for the right wing shows you have no respect for freedom and liberty.

Terry's fate is not to be determined by a CNN quick poll. It should be determined by the courts in florida.

while forgetting that the Nazis were good at medical experiments on unwilling victims.

If it was a respirator, I'd say pull the plug. But not starving to death, because I see a very slippery slope toward legalized euthanasia and the courts or legislature deciding what is quality of life.

By Florida law, ventilators and feeding tubes are considered exactly the same -- an artificial and extraordinary measure to sustain life.

Do you realize that dying people stop eating as a matter or course? Should we force them all to have feeding tubes? The slippery slope you mention will absolutely bring end-stage cancer and Alzheimer dementia patients into play. Feeding tubes are removed every single day in hospice care and nursing homes in the US without controversy and legal intervention.

here're these, plus Shrub signing the terminate-against-patient's/guardian's desires:

**********QUOTE********
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2270&ncid=2270&e=2&u=/krwashbureau/20050319/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_braindamagedwoman_guardian_wa

.... Wolfson was appointed by a Florida court in the fall of 2003 to be Schiavo's guardian ad litem, or guardian at law, to deduce Schiavo's best interests and represent neither her husband nor her parents but Terri Schiavo herself.

This makes Wolfson one of the very few people to have spent extended time with Schiavo and gauged her level of awareness without having a vested interest at stake.

In the end, after long hours at Schiavo's bedside and after poring over 30,000 pages of legal documents, Wolfson concluded that Schiavo was indeed in a permanent vegetative state. ....

But Schiavo never made eye contact. When Wolfson visited her when her parents were there, she never made eye contact with them either, he said. And for all of Wolfson's pleadings and coaxing, he never got what he most wanted: a sign. ....

Wolfson was dismayed to learn Friday that Barbara Weller, an attorney for the Schindlers, claimed that Schiavo tried to speak. "Terri does not speak," he said. "To claim otherwise reduces her to a fiction." ....



http://floridahealthinfo.hsc.usf.edu/TheresaSchiavoFina...

SCHIAVO's parents admit they would not honor her wishes:
From page 14 the 38 page report commissioned by Jeb Bush:

Testimony provided by members of the Schindler family included very personal statements about their desire and intention to ensure that Theresa remain alive . . . at any and all costs.

Nearly gruesome examples were given, eliciting agreement by family members that in the event Theresa should contract diabetes and subsequent gangrene in each of her limbs, they would agree to amputate each limb and would then, were she to be diagnosed with heart disease, perform open-heart surgery.

Within the testimony, as part of the hypothetical presented, Schindler family members stated that even if Theresa had told them of her intention to have artificial nutrition withdrawn, they would not do it. Throughout this painful and difficult trial, the family acknowledged that Theresa was in a diagnosed persistent vegetative state.


http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/healthlawprof_blog/2005/03/lifesupport_sto.html

Shrub Signed 1999 Law Allowing Life Support Removal over Surrogate's Objections

.... Both papers report that this is the first time in the United States a court has allowed life-sustaining treatment to be withdrawn from a pediatric patient over the objections of the child's parent. (The Dallas paper quotes John Paris, a bioethicist at Boston College, as its source.) If true, the unique Texas statute under which this saga was played out contributed in no small way to the outcome. As one of the laws co-authors (along with a roomful of other drafters, in 1999) let me explain.

Under chapter 166 of the Texas Health and Safety Code, if an attending physician disagrees with a surrogate over a life-and-death treatment decision, there must be an ethics committee consultation (with notice to the surrogate and an opportunity to participate). In a futility case such as Sun Hudson's, in which the treatment team is seeking to stop treatment deemed to be nonbeneficial, if the ethics committee agrees with the team, the hospital will be authorized to discontinue the disputed treatment (after a 10-day delay, during which the hospital must help try to find a facility that will accept a transfer of the patient). These provisions, which were added to Texas law in 1999, originally applied only to adult patients; in 2003; they were made applicable to disputes over treatment decisions for or on behalf of minors. (I hasten to add that one of the co-drafters in both 1999 and 2003 was the National Right to Life Committee. Witnesses who testified in support of the bill in 1999 included representatives of National Right to Life, Texas Right to Life, and the Hemlock Society. Our bill passed both houses, unanimously, both years, and the 1999 law was signed by then Governor George W. Bush.)


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3073295
March 8, 2005, 12:33AM

Hospitals can end life support
Decision hinges on patient's ability to pay, prognosis
A patient's inability to pay for medical care combined with a prognosis that renders further care futile are two reasons a hospital might suggest cutting off life support, the chief medical officer at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital said Monday.

Dr. David Pate's comments came as the family of Spiro Nikolouzos fights to keep St. Luke's from turning off the ventilator and artificial feedings keeping the 68-year-old grandfather alive. ....

Law allows removal
State law allows doctors to remove patients from life support if the hospital's ethics committee agrees, but it requires that the hospital give families 10 days to find another facility.

A similar case is still in the courts. Texas Children's Hospital wants to discontinue life support on 5-month-old Sun Hudson, who was diagnosed shortly after birth with a fatal form of dwarfism. His mother, Wanda Hudson, wants her son's care to continue at the hospital. ....

***************UNQUOTE***********

Basically it discusses the case strictly from the court rulings.


I found this interesting (not mentioned much)- at this point neither the husband or the parents can make a decision on her treatment. They have to petition the court-she is basically a ward of the state now.

http://www.abstractappeal.com/index.html