have you seen Schiavo videos?

http://www.blogsforterri.com/video.php

I don't know how old these are or if her condition is different than seen in the videos.

Her condition isn't as "vegetative" as this layman would've interpreted the term.

So, without involving any politics or political commentary, can anyone offer any insight into her condition as depicted in the videos?

Looks pretty vegetative to me. Plus, her heart attack destroyed her frontal lobe-this is irreparable. I'm sure the media neglected to highlight this point. Would you like to live like that?

I live in the Tampa-St. Pete area, and they seem to be on tv nightly in the 2 years I've been here.

According to Republican Judge George Greer, what is seen on tv and the blogs is heavily edited, and the only signs of life in a 4 hour long video. Everything in there is just a reflex of the small part of her brain that is functioning. She can't see, hear, feel, or comprehend anything around her.

Recovery is hopeless. Have you ever seen a faith healer restore an amputee. One would have to grow her a new brain.

would be to review what the myriad of doctors have had to say about her condition in the last decade. To me, their expertise is more important than videos of questionable lineage.

upon hours of video where the random grunts and eye blinks coincided with the timing of the events of the family.

This has already been in the courts and they determined that footage to be fraudulent!

some have said that she is responding to some light/sound like a moth would respond to a light bulb

Why can't they just give her an OD of morphine? Why is it necessary to let her starve to death??

illegal in most states. Dehydration is actually pretty merciful to those in the end stages. Dehydration will actually be the method causing her heart to stop finally. She'll be given morphine to ease any discomfort, probably whether there is a sign of it or not.

(Remember your basic survival skills: water is more important than food.)

Honest question.. I don't know the answer.

These are controlled by the stem, which is still intact. Would she feel high? No. She cannot feel anything.

Yes, drugs would still affect her body, even though her cerebral cortex has disintegrated.

I keep thinking she's in great pain and can't tell anybody about it because her brain is liquefied goo. IMO they should have brought in Kevorkian years ago since euthanasia is humane.

I'm not a doctor, but i have MS and i have done LOTS of reading about the CNS. The pain centers are, IIRC, in the cerebellum, not the base or stem. And the spinal cord is just a huge conduit of current, and nothing lands there.

I've got lesions on my cervical spine which they think is delaying the motor signal to my left leg, so i walk funny. The others are on the cerebellum, and they think one is where the left eye lands (hence the blindness in that eye), and the others on the pain centers.

That's why i think the pain centers are higher than the brain stem, 'cuz, i'm in constant pain and i don't have any lesions on my brain stem.
The Professor

They can't say for 100% that they cannot feel any pain, but they cannot process any thoughts or sensations, whatsoever. They give these patients pain meds, just in case. Loosely, it's similiar to someone being totally wasted and unable to register pain.

http://www.thalidomide.ca/gwolbring/pvsilm.htm

PVS patients are considered to have permanently lost the function of their cerebral cortex. ... All voluntary reactions or behavioral responses reflecting consciousness, volition or emotion at the cerebral cortical level are absent. ...there is no observable experience of pain or suffering. ... They remain permanently unaware... Two of the basic practical issues with any post-coma patient are "Will they recover?" and "Do they feel pain?" As far as possible, Jennett and Plum's definition removed both questions from the realm of argument by building the qualities of irreversibility and lack of consciousness into the attributes of the condition, and, as the quotation shows, most doctors and virtually all ethicists have from the outset accepted these attributed characteristics without question(5)


In 1994 a Multi-Society Task Force made up of representatives of the American Academy of Neurology, the Child Neurology Society, the American Neurological Association, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and the American Academy of Pediatrics produced a Consensus Statement on the Medical Aspects of the Persistent Vegetative State (PVS).

The vegetative state can be diagnosed according to the following criteria; (1) no evidence of awareness of self or environment and an inability to interact with others; (2) no evidence of sustained, reproducible, purposeful, or voluntary behavioural responses to visual, auditory, tactile, or noxious stimuli; (3) no evidence of language comprehension or expression; (4) intermittent wakefulness manifested by the presence of sleep-wake cycles; (5) sufficiently preserved hypothalamic and brain-stem autonomic function to permit survival with medical and nursing care; (6) bowel and bladder incontinence; and (7) variably preserved cranial-nerve reflexes (pupillary, oculophalic, corneal, vestibulo-ocular, and gag) and spinal reflexes..... A wakeful unconscious state that lasts longer than a few weeks is referred to as a persistent vegetative state. (1)
This Consensus Statement built on the 1990 work of the American Medical Association's Council on Scientific Affairs and Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, and presents the appearance of virtual unanimity among the governing elements of American medicine on a linked series of beliefs on the diagnosis, treatment, and ethical status of post-coma patients. These medical conventions are generally accepted unquestioningly as constituting a factual foundation for ethical debate in this area; liberal ethicists like Ronald Dworkin and Peter Singer can thus use PVS as the basis for structures of ethical reasoning - limiting cases that eliminate confounding variables by providing practical examples of humanness combined with insentience. The courts have also for some decades been prepared to take judicial cognizance of the condition in such cases as Gannon v. Albany Memorial Hospital. (2)

The part of her brain that does work (autonomics) is what the excessive morphine would shut down.
The Professor

Terri is not in a "locked in" state, she has no ability for any cognitive thought or consciousness. All of her movements and functions are autonomic or reflexive.

It was random actions. What you watch on that video are moments when it appeared she was responding. She gave the same random grunts and eye blinks at other times when there was nothign to respond to and did not respond to the lights during other footage.

the video is a fraud, and the court saw through it.

They are 4-5 years old, for one thing, and HIGHLY edited. These videos do not reflect her true state of health.

ruled she can not be videotaped.

Because the only thing these highly-edited videos are being used for is political propoganda.

that are shown are old.

How's about that one?

have been released to begin with.

my point was it was a highly edited, FRAUDULENT video.

We are pointing out that OUTDATED, three year old, edited tapes don't mean anything.

could you give me a "rundown" or transcript of what she's saying on these videos?

Yes, I would also like a transcript of all the things Terri Schiavo says on this videotape.

somebody posts that limpballs is saying that theres video of shiavo speaking etc...and not an hour or so later THIS post pops up.

Coincidence? i'll let you be the judge.

Begin Transcript:











End Transcript.

The tapes have hours of Terri, these are moments of her "re-acting" to a balloon, a voice, etc.

I've seen video's that clearly show that a horse can do fancy multiplication, and guys levitate out of thin air, and do all sorts of things.

Her brain stem is still operating and she has reflexes. If you stand in front of her for several days calling her name, she'll eventually randomly look in your direction. Those random reflexes include sighs and other vocalizations of air passing through the vocal chords. She cannot respond to noxious stimuli or to someone voice or presence.

Here's an article reporting his attempt to communicate with her by her guardian ad litem:

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


Welcome to DU.

Just read what the neurologists who examined her said about her condition.

She's in a vegetative state.

Or how about the court-appointed doctors who have spent years on Terri's case. Videos prove NOTHING. And how 'vegetative' would you like her to be?

What about the video clips that show Terri reacting to her mother?

The court opinions indicate that similar videos were viewed in their entirety by the trial court, which found that Terri's actions were no more than reflexive and could not be reproduced with any consistency. The Second District affirmed that decision.

http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html#qanda

:shrug:

Fodder for those who buy into the words of radical clerics.

between post counts under 50 and the posting of "have you actually seen the videos?" threads.

whaddya figure the statistical liklihood of that really is?

manipulated.

Have you ever been around a severe stroke victim? I have. My Aunt had a very severe stroke. She had a very similar appearance and reaction to stimuli. BUT, there was nothing there.

Her body was there, her mind was gone, despite the desire to believe that her reactions were anything but reflexive in nature, my aunt was dead.

The same goes for Schaivo. She has no cerebral cortex, she has no ability to think. She has no cognitive function. In short, everything that makes Terri Terri is gone, it withered away and atrophied to be replaced by spinal fluid years ago.

And boy, I have never seen such flames!

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

On edit:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3304345&mesg_id=3304345

Two neurologists chipped in and gave their two cents, and aside from that it was this same bunch of assholes telling me I was ignorant and not entitled to an opinion. I never would have dreamed there would be THAT many intolerant fucks here.

people do tend to get heated, however, when they see those who have been caught up in some of the misinformation that is out there.

Sid

respond that I had no right to an opinion, that I should shut up (those got edited out), that I'm deluded, and that I'm totally ignorant of the facts. Many people were polite and reasoned, but many people weren't.

Even your post implies that I was "caught up in some of the misinformation that is out there," which I'm frankly a bit insulted by.

My position is that this is a challenging issue, but somehow there seems to be little room on this board for an alternate opinion. The tenor of most of these threads differs from fundy third reich lockstep thinking only in the conclusion as to what should be done with Terri.

I'm very, very disappointed by the lack of tolerance for people with differing opinions that I saw in that thread, and it's not people gently informing me of facts that they thought I might not be aware of, it's people treating me like my opinion is the opinion of a moron, while they themselves say things that are factually untrue about the case and assert their own grossly uninformed opinions. This may have only been a percent of the posters on that thread, but I was appalled at what I saw.

On edit:

I went and counted all the disrespectful posts on my thread. I counted 18 really rude posts. That's almost 10%.

Here's my favorite post from my thread:

"who the hell cares what you think?

you're not her husband so you and everybody else needs to butt out. by law her husband, in consultation with her doctors, is her legal guardian. so your opinion as well as all the other nutjobs you seem to be so influenced by have no say in the matter. sorry to sound rude, but know-it-all judgmental types give me a rash."

and you used it as the basis for your post.

Then you continued to treat it as valid, even after many posters provided links to testimony where the video was found to be inaccurate. So, yes, I believe you got caught up in the misinformation.

Then again, you did post that you were playing devils advocate, so who really knows what you believe.

Sid

that the video is misinformation?

Sources have told you this. There are lots of different sources saying lots of different things about this woman. Both sides have a vested interest in paying people to further their agenda, and both the husband and the parents have tried to exploit this poor woman.

Frankly, I think most of the info put out by both sides is garbage. I don't trust either side.

All I know is what I see, and the videos are part of that. What I see in the videos is a severely disabled woman. I have no idea what she's thinking or feeling, or if she's thinking or feeling at all. Based on what the neurologists who responded to my post said, it's unlikely she's thinking or feeling much, but we really don't know.

Whatever the case, she's unlikely to get much better than that, even with theraputic treatment.

I think she should be allowed to die a peaceful death, personally, but the disabled rights people don't agree with me, and ultimately, the decision is not mine to make. But if people who are disabled are arguing for her life, they're in a better position than I am to judge.

I think it's important, though, to understand why we're so "heated" about this, and why any dissent at all is so threatening. Even me labelling her as "disabled" got quite a bit of dissent. Why is this so contentious?

Pot, kettle, black.

I see no reason to be tolerant of intolerance.

Finally, liberals can be as intolerant of opposing viewpoints as the worst freepers. I offer this thread as a clear example of that

You called several if not all, who did not agree with YOU, "the worst freepers" on that thread. Pot, kettle, black.

Should we agree with ignorant statements? Is that your definition of tolerance? "Yes, it's ok to lynch blacks." Is that what you are looking for?

which is obvious even from your quote.

There were many people on that thread who disagreed with me, but were very polite about it. They were willing to consider my perspective, but they just didn't happen to agree.

I'm not saying we should agree with ignorant statements, I'm saying that we need to respect other opinions. I know that this is something I need to work on, as do we all. This is a moderated board, and if you think someone's opinion violates the rules of the board, you're free to hit the alert button and tell the moderator.

And how can you honestly compare my questioning whether Terri should be allowed to die with saying that it's OK to lynch blacks????

For shame!

Your post indicates you are a mindless regurgitator of publican propaganda.

Someone should pull your feeding tube and do us all a favor.

The eye movements, facial expressions, noises etc. are involuntary. She is not aware of her surroundings and has no control of her body because her cerebral cortex has liquified. The sleep/awake cycles she experiences are deceptive - a lay person may interpret them as awareness, but they mean nothing. Terri can never be rehabilitated; she is in a persistent vegetative state.

But I wish I could see the other 3 hours of them...the parts where they ask her to open her eyes and she doesn't.

from her. And the parts where they're not doing anything, just setting up, and she's blinking away and grunting.

There's more of that in the original footage than these few moments.

Thanks to anyone willing to provide links or substantial insights.

You others have to settle down for christ's sake. It's just ridiculous.

I'm new to the issue and looking for info, that's all.

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

Then come back and start another thread. :hi:

Probably no need for another thread, though, right?

You'll definitely have a better understanding of the case since the beginning - you'll learn more about Terri's condition. Why not start another thread?

she has been examined by numerous doctors, all of whom declare her brain dead.

I agree the videos cause one to pause but I think it should be up to those with the medical and scientific knowledge to decide these things.

We know why you are here and you aren't fooling anyone.

Orginially published in LA Times.

A persistent vegetative state is something different, "sort of like being in an awake coma," said Dr. David A. Goldstein of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. The patients' eyes are open, they have sleep-wake cycles, and it often appears that they are interacting with visitors, which makes it very hard on families.

The brain of such patients is functioning only at a very rudimentary level, said Dr. Kenneth V. Iserson of the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center in Tucson. They cannot feel pain, express themselves or receive communication.

They may even have grimaces or smiles or other facial movements that look like they are reflecting emotions, but "there really isn't a significant relationship with the outside world," Goldstein said.

And the longer the state persists, "the less likely they are to come out of it," Keane added. Schiavo has been in this condition for 15 years, "and it is very, very unlikely she would wake up," he added.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05078/474107.stm

If She Were In A Sleeping Coma, No One Would Think Twice About Letting Her Go, But Since Her Eyes Are Open, That Just Makes All The Difference...If I'm Ever In Her Position, Plz Pull The Plug.

A part of the brain that controls body functions is all that is working. Regardless of how good or bad her state is she said she did not want to live like this and her wishes are all that matter.

It'll come up and you can run programs, but only the most rudimentary programs.

minutes where a battery powered Elmo's eyes would seem to follow an object for a few seconds. Should we then fly in 250 congress people to save Elmo from having his batteries taken out????

Even if Terri did have some brain function in her Cerebral Cortex the part where vision is produced is GONE!!!! I swearer I am seeing the death of Science and Reason in this country and it's scary and sad.

Is the "death of Science and Reason?" Trying to learn something or hear from other people?

Horseshit.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Astronomical lack of credibility.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

then you should have no problem understanding the trial by fire that you have placed yourself into. Time will tell.

Jay

What good does any of the vitriolic posts do? Did they inform? Was it the best use of anyone's time?

If I were a wingnut, would those posts have been effective? What were they meant to do?

What "fire?" It's a bunch of posts on the internet, some driven by ego, some by cooperation. It's ineffective vapor. The communication of info or substanative insights *on the issue* are the only value in this thread. The rest is the white noise of the web.

It was extraordinary pissy and in the real world, where interactions matter, a lot of people might even been ashamed of themselves. But, apparently their standards are only as good as the requirements of the situation.

a bunch of "white noise". It was pissy but not extraordinarily so and under current circumstances, I doubt if anyone would be ashamed of themselves if the conversation were live rather than virtual. Standards? The only thing that standards have given us is a removal from every aspect governmental decision making. Ask Tom Daschle about standards.

Jay

Their is no crime against Inquiry and being naive to how things work on DU when you are new. Let the moderators decide if someone is trying to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. You can hit the alert key but lets leave final judgment to the moderators. So far they have sided on letting the person stay for a while. While he/she is her we should help her/him feel welcome.

Seems strange that a person would just start posting questions without doing at least a minimum amount of lurking beforehand. You know, to get a flavor of the atmosphere. If not, why would they think we would have answers to such pressing questions of the day. Like I said, "time will tell".

Jay

Is the Circus we saw last night and the number of people who bought into it. I applaud anyone who wants to sincerely look for the facts. I won't judge you because I don't know you. I will tell you that people are often suspicious of people posting things like this with very low post counts. I hope we have not been too hard on you.

Nothing written in a post can be "too hard," no worries.

Other than having to sift through a lot of nothing to get to a few informative leads there's no damage done.

What part of the post was suspicious? I'm a little taken aback.

had taken the time to do a through investigation into the facts of this case. Don't take this in a harsh way but if you had just asked what people had thought about the videos rather than putting up a link to them it would have seemed less suspicious. I sincerely apologize for being rude to you. This case has created more than it's fair share of threads and people have seen threads like this over and over and over. I think people were just scratching their heads wondering why their was another one so late in the game. I hope we do not run you off. You seem like a cool person and you are not the first to ask such questions. Stick around people are usually not this rude and even if they sometimes are you just have to take it with a grain of sand and think of it as their problem.

I thought putting up a link was important to indicate what I was talking about.

It's just "late in the game" because I just found them myself.

I'll review the DU features, maybe I'm missing something on how to search previous posts, or how to find consolidated links or info on any one particular topic.

The problem with web searching is, of course, humans make better BS filters (exceptions noted in this thread, of course !!!). Asking a person gets you to the good stuff faster than Google.

I'll post more, er, sensitively next time.

Thanks again.

If you put in schiavo case all kinds of threads come up.

This may take you their directly:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php

It has so successfully propagandized and diverted.

It has been said MANY times here and everywhere that that video consists of about FOUR (4) minutes, carefully EDITED with the camera angles that would APPEAR to show responsiveness and eye contact. THERE IS NONE!

Here's one thread out of many on the issue:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3314446

*******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." ....

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

produced in order to get these. However, after watching one I stopped, because what comes to my mind is how I would feel if I were the one lying in bed severly brain damaged and strangers were watching video tapes of me in such a state posted on the internet. Even if she was (note: I believe the doctors that she is in a vegetative state) instead in some sort of semi-vegitative state, it still strikes me as an invasion of her privacy to post such things on the internet when we have no way of knowing if she would have wanted to be exposed in such a way. I certainly would not want people watching video of me like that .. anybody else have an opinion on that aspect?

But if you were Terri Schiavo, you wouldn't have a cerebral cortex, so you wouldn't feel anything.

I guess I expressed myself badly. This is not about what she wishes now, since by all medical and scientific knowledge/examination there is no Terry left. However, we care about what she would have wanted or thought if somehow she had prescience about how things had turned out. Otherwise you could make the same argument about keeping her body alive. She has no cerebral cortex so she does not currently care either way.

I guess what I meant to say is that if somehow, in the future, I was in a state where I could not express myself, was severely ill, or was (as Terry is) in a vegetative state it bothers me to think that some future hypothetical person might watch video of me in that state posted on the internet. And for the record, I don't give a damn about what right wingnuts want me to feel and whether it coincides with what I actually feel or not.

They Talk About Her Wishes Wether She Would Have Wanted To Be Kept Alive Or Not. I Know I Wouldn't Want People Watching Video's Of Me In That State, Which, By The Way If I'm Ever In...Pull The Plug,Tube, Whatever.

thought the other day. It does seem to be a gross invasion of her privacy to have these images plastered on tv constantly and over the internets when she has no way to consent for these images to be splashed everywhere, nor any control over the way the images are used.

Did I understand correctly?

That aspect of watching the snippet of tape just made me feel awful. I think it is the same feeling you get when you see a reporter try to interview someone who just experienced a terrible tragedy .. its a violation of what should be private and not public moments of people's lives.

This is unrelated to the video, but I think I understand what has happened between her husband and other family. I can tell you from my own experience that things happen while your loved one is ill that you regret, things happen that you change your mind about later and the tension and stress of it makes you irrational. My father died of brain cancer two years ago at 53 while my sister was only 10 years old. All of us were so angry, but had no one to blame at all (even the poor doctors caught some of the brunt of that). As my dad got sicker and sicker there was this anger and tension that ended up playing out between his wife and sister (my step-mom and aunt). Now, happily, they live and interact as family and all is forgiven, but at the time it was sort of like a volcano and the pressure had to come out and fighting between them was how it did. Among other things, I think that is what happened here between the husband and family .. and its just never healed because of the situation, thats my theory anyway.

I would imagine that a hospital or hospice room is private property. Did Mrs. Schiavo or her legal guardian (the State) consent to the use of her likeness?

I know, I know, it's public record.

Or just little propaganda snippets?

hmmmm...

What else should matter than Terri's wishes?

the snippets of the tape are propaganda.

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/11/10/Tampabay/Schiavo_tapes__snippe.shtml

"We should always err on the side of life." --Bush (Unless it's a black baby like the one in Texas my law pulled the plug on, or the hundreds getting executed by the death penalty).

"Terri is still very much alive, just like the rest of us. She survived her passion weekend." --DeLay

They are playing these clips AD NASEUM! :puke:

So wouldn't that mean not going to war and killing 100,000 people?

And shit! Since only 1 in 10 people want to life like that it seems to me we should err on the side of probability.

. . .the only living person who is or ever has been a governor with the highest capital punishment body count on his record? I think i read that no governor still alive presided over as many excecutions as he did while in Texas.

Culture of life, my eye!
The Professor

fewest number of pardons in like 175 years? The guy is a complete hard ass dick head!

The Professor

Edited to make it look like Terri is responding to her environment.

Even then, the only thing that indicates that she "technically" responds to stimuli is her following the balloon above her head.

However, given that microbes respond to some stimuli I wouldn't even accept that particular segment as proof of any awareness.

There was a report in a newspaper (appears to be St. Petersburg Times although I think I saw some info in the Wash. Post as well)about some of the other material on the unedited tape and at one point her father actually starts getting exasperated with her behavior/lack of response.

I guess that could be interpreted as as sign that Terri wasn't giving them enough material to work with but you can bet they weren't going to use that as their evidence that Terri is still a functional being.

again.

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/11/10/Tampabay/Schiavo_tapes__snippe.shtml

A few minutes cut together from hours of taping.

She has no cerebral cortex. She is NOT responsive. She doesn't think. She doesn't feel. She doesn't recognize her family. She doesn't attempt to speak

not 30 seconds of video. Her husband has fought for 7 years. The courts and doctors agree. She's brain dead. You can't look at her and see her eyes open and decide anything. The doctors know just how much life is there. The body lives but the mind is gone and it ain't coming back.

STOP PUSHING LIES.

How many time to we have to explain to "DUers" that those videos are spliced and edited to look as if she is more responsive than she is?

She HAS NO CEREBRAL CORTEX. NO ONE IS HOME. She cannot see, speak, or form a THOUGHT in her head. Nothing. She can't perceive pain. She can't perceive ANYTHING. No personality, no emotions, no nothing.

Don't fall for the lies. Or if you are here to spread them, you might want to know you're wasting your time.

and checking it out. However, you don't really care about her anyway, it just the principle right?

As your proof that she can think, feel, and function? Or was that someone else?