The Terri Schiavo Thread

“geesh, the woman is dead!! Let her rest in peace.”

“No problem dehydrating her for 2 weeks when she's alive, but don't talk about the inhumanity of it after she's dead. Make a lot of sense.”

“so sarge how many times did you visit her?”

“the man's words were:

According to everything I have heard and read, Terry Schiavo had no chance for a recovery

youre the one assuming he hasnt read that much

RIF”

“Debating beyond the point of reason is the cut off.”

“youre the one assuming he hasnt read that much

He couldn't have read much because central to the court case was the claim that if she would have received better therapy, she had a chance of recovery. I'm not assuming anything, he admitted he didn't read it. One of the main reasons for the legal battle.

mapleleaf - Zero. What does that have to do with my ability to discuss this? Why don't you ask everyone else with the opposite view the same question? Did you visit her? What gives you the right to be of the opinion she should have been murdered if you didn't visit her? Watch the double standards.”

““Debating beyond the point of reason is the cut off.” - MarkO

You are the one who gave a percent as you debated, I'm simply following up with a question. What is the percent of brain waste where the brain no longer goes into hibernation?”

“he admitted he didn't read it

where? be specific”

““I too would be interested in knowing the specifics about those 3 cases. What/where was their particular damage? Were their brains atrophied at all like Terry Schiavo's? What was their response to rpeated doses of the medication? According to everything I have heard and read, Terry Schiavo had no chance for a recovery. Her brain had atrophied. That cannot be reversed for neural tissue. In my opinion, there is no way this was murder. This was letting her go with dignity instead of the constant and perpetual humiliation that is the life of someone in a vegetative state.
- Scott”
shirsch99
2:47:55 PM
5/28/06”

“that is not the same thing as not having read much”

“Crash - It was central to the lawsuit. He couldn't possibly know anything about this case and not have come across that.

PS - Nice changing of the question. He said he didn't read it, and I said he admitted it. Then you switch to the "read much" thing. He didn't read it period, whether or not he read much. That said, if he knew anything above the average person's knowledge of that case, he would have known that it was argued that she could be rehabilitated.
last edited: 5/29/06 8:35:23 PM”

“or maybe hes just a helluva lot smarter than you (hard to believe, i know) and much more qualified to have an opinion”

“If he is smarter, it's amazing that he didn't know that it was argued that Terri might be able to be rehabilitated.

I think you're missing something here crash.

This isn't about his opinion as to whether or not she could be rehabilitated. He said that according to everything that he read, she couldn't be rehabilitated. All that means is he read one side of the story. The lawsuit included the argument that she had a chance. This isn't about who he agrees with. The point is he said everything he read said otherwise. So, either two possible things are going on here. (1) He only read her husband's argument and things that supported it, completely ignoring the other argument, or (2) He forgot about (selective memory likely) anything he didn't agree with. Likely he automatically dismissed the other argument. That would be he DID read some things that said she could be rehabilitated.

This isn't a question of being smart. This is a question of only hearing one side of a story. If he only (by his admission) read one side of the story and wants to debate this, I'd say he isn't as smart as you give him credit for.

My guess is he's very smart, but also very biased, and therefore has selective memory.
last edited: 5/29/06 8:45:05 PM”

“i interpret him as he read all the facts, and then formed his own opinion.”

“That might be the case, but that's not what he said.”

“mapleleaf - Zero. What does that have to do with my ability to discuss this? Why don't you ask everyone else with the opposite view the same question


because everyone else allows this woman to be at peace. why do you insists on digging her up? why will you let it drop? when they dig up her bones and give her drugs?
last edited: 5/29/06 9:04:34 PM”

“and what you said he said aint what he said either”

“he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones



excitable sarge they all said!”

“Crash, to quote me exactly, I said "he specifically said he did not read anywhere that Terri had a chance" His exact quote was "According to everything I have heard and read, Terry Schiavo had no chance for a recovery."”

“because everyone else allows this woman to be at peace. why do you insists on digging her up? why will you let it drop? when they dig up her bones and give her drugs?

mapleleaf - You are apart of this discussion as much as I. We just have opposing views. We are both discussing her. You also didn't answer my question. How do you know she's a peace? Did you visit her?”

“Also mapleleaf - Why are you making this about me? If you don't want to discuss Terri Schiavo, perhaps you shouldn't be on the Terri Schiavo thread, and instead should be on a Sarge thread.”

“nope I did not visit her. I have my own problems to deal with.

sarge it really is time to let it go. you talk like she was your sister or Aunt.

has this hit to close to home?”

“thats not what i was referring to”

“nope I did not visit her. I have my own problems to deal with.

Then perhaps you should stop with the double standards.

sarge it really is time to let it go. you talk like she was your sister or Aunt. has this hit to close to home?

Yes, she was a human being, and I care about people. I don't go with the "out of sight, out of mind" mentality. She doesn't have to be a blood relative to have compassion for her.”

“maybe you should worry about the people that are still alive. Aids walk, Breast Cancer Walk. ect....”

“Sarge, I'm not planning on eating any crow. You said:
“"That's exactly what we already do to people, like with people with Parkinson's disease. When you see Michael J. Fox talking on t.v. or acting, it's only because they slipped him a drug 20 minutes beforehand. Otherwise, he's like a vegetable in a wheelchair."
Sarge
8:13:42 AM
5/24/06

Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease is not advanced enough to require a wheelchair and to say that someone in a wheelchair is a vegetable is to reprehensible for words. I am appalled that you have basically said that being physically disabled makes one unable to function mentally.

The pill in the article acts only on viable brain tissue per the article. This is Terri Schivio's 2002 CT scan and a diagram of the brain. As you can clearly see, the woman did not have enough brain tissue left to engage in functions like talking, composing thoughts, or following a TV show’s plot.


Just because Ms. Schivio’s parents alleged in their lawsuit that their daughter could have recovered does not make it so. My heart goes out to these parents as it had to be very hard to let their daughter go with her seemingly awake and sometimes making movements that appeared to be her eyes following objects. In reality, the lobe of the brain that processes optical images was found to be missing at her autopsy – she was blind.

This is URL to explain what the different lobes contol: http://www.neuroskills.com/brain.shtml
last edited: 5/30/06 2:53:40 PM”

“Frolicking Dino - One more time, just for you buddy. They end up in a wheelchair, like a vegetable, like a paraplegic, like a person with a broken foot, whatever. I was using an analogy "like a vegetable". That doesn't mean they ARE a vegetable. I said it more than once now, hopefully you got it that time. If that doesn't help you, think of this exclamation: "Hey Dino, I'm in the water like a fish!" That doesn't mean you are a fish.

The whole point of the drug is that it takes advantage of areas that are atrophied WHICH surround areas that went into hibernation to protect it. So, you have no idea if there were enough areas in hiberation, regardless of your medical degree.

Just because somebody claims that she couldn't have been rehabilitated doesn't make it so either.

Blind people should be killed? I hope you're kidding.
last edited: 5/30/06 3:06:16 PM”

“http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=/SpecialReports/archive/200606/SPE20060601a.html

Sleeping Pill May Reverse Comatose Patients, Study Says
By Dawn Rizzoni
CNSNews.com Correspondent
June 01, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - Scientific researchers have revealed in the medical journal NeuroRehabilitation that a commonly-used sleeping pill, zolpidem (brand name Ambien), can be used to temporarily awaken patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), coma, or other brain-injured state.

The discovery has attracted the interest of The Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation for Health Care Ethics. The Foundation was named in memory of the brain-damaged Florida woman who died in March 2005 after her husband Michael Schiavo won a long legal battle to cut off her off from all nutrition.

In light of the medical breakthrough, The Schindler-Schiavo Foundation has called for a moratorium of "ordinary care removal for persons diagnosed in a PVS condition." Terri's parents and siblings do not believe Michael Schiavo would have allowed her to be administered the Ambien even if it had been suggested.
"Sadly, we will never know if any of these drugs or treatments that were available would have improved Terri's condition," the Schindler family stated in their press release. "Terri's family pleaded for years with Terri's guardian, Michael Schiavo, and the courts to try and use different treatments of medicine that could possibly help improve Terri's condition, but were denied."

Doctors R.P. Clauss and W.H. Nel reported that the stimulation effects of zolpidem reverse the damaging effects in brain injured patients, to the point that they are able to wake up and interact with their environment. The benefits were maintained as long as the drug stayed in a patient's system, according to Clauss and Nel.

The drug was given daily to patients in the study which lasted six years. Each patient had been in a PVS for at least three years.

The discovery that zolpidem had such promising effects came about when Dr. Clauss gave a PVS patient the drug for restlessness. The drug, which normally induces sleepiness, also has an arousing effect on certain areas of the brain, the Clauss/Nel report indicates.

After being given zolpidem, the patients in the study could "interact, make jokes, and speak on the phone," Clauss stated in the journal, and one patient even played catch with his family.

Stephen Drake, research analyst for the pro-disabilities group Not Dead Yet, said it's not that zolpidem helped PVS patients, but that "misdiagnosis is the real issue."

"We put out a moratorium (on removal of ordinary care in PVS patients) a year ago," Drake said. "Persistent Vegetative State should really be called Persistent Non-Responsive State because that's all we can tell from the outside. There's no way to really know at the present time" whether someone is truly PVS or temporarily non-responsive.
"There's so much evidence that we're making mistakes" in these PVS diagnoses, Drake said. "So to us, (the zolpidem news) is interesting, but it doesn't change anything."

The Schindler family members also touched on the misdiagnosis issue in their press release.

"A report released by the British Medical Journal in 1996 found that 43 percent of the diagnosed cases of PVS they studied were in fact misdiagnosed," the statement reads. "We at the Foundation are seeing that the PVS diagnosis is being commonly misdiagnosed. Consequently, it has become very obvious we don't know enough about this so-called diagnosis, and common sense dictates that the removal of food and water based on this misclassification must end until further studies can be conducted."

Bobby Schindler, Terri's brother, told Cybercast News Service that he believes "the PVS diagnosis is a very subjective diagnosis."

"It is now being used in most states as one of the criteria to allow doctors to recommend terminating life. We are seeing a growing amount of evidence that suggests that the PVS diagnosis is often being misdiagnosed. And now there are certain drugs that could provide help to persons that are being labeled as PVS," Schindler said.

Other drugs have been successfully used in the past to help PVS patients. In December 2000, Patricia White Bull awoke after 16 years of what doctors called a persistent vegetative state, after being given the drug Amantadine. The drug is commonly used to stimulate individuals with Parkinson's disease and brain damage.

The pharmaceutical group NeuroHealing was just granted "orphan drug status" by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on a drug labeled NH001 that worked much like Ambien in PVS and comatose patients, but with longer-lasting effects, according to the company's president, Daniel Katzman.

"With the growing amount of uncertainly regarding this diagnosis, and drugs that could potentially help, it is only common sense we stop using it, particularly when the decision to terminate life can't be undone," Bobby Schindler said.

Michael Schiavo's political group TerriPAC did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the pro-euthanasia group Death With Dignity.”

“Other drugs have been successfully used in the past to help PVS patients. In December 2000, Patricia White Bull awoke after 16 years of what doctors called a persistent vegetative state, after being given the drug Amantadine. The drug is commonly used to stimulate individuals with Parkinson's disease and brain damage.”

“Quick, flog that sucker!”

“MarkO - You're more than welcome to not open a thread that you're tired of.”

“He's large and in charge and his name is Sarge.

You're more than welcome to set yourself up to ridicule by reviving this stinker.”

“You're more than welcome to set yourself up to ridicule by reviving this stinker.

At what point in my TT career did you start believing that I care what other people think about me?

Stop your trolling and let people discuss this issue.”

“There was no grey matter left to "wake up". It was gone, fini, null. Period.

The drug wouldn't have prevented the atrophy of that grey matter to begin with. Period.

There, we have discussed it. Now take a shotgun and put that horse out of its misery.”

“At what point in my TT career did you start believing that I care what other people think about me?
Sarge
11:44:18 AM
6/01/06


TT career????”

“techntrek > sarge”

“I'm greater than Sarge? LOL.”

“LMAO!!!!!

















(*rolls eyes*)”

“There was no grey matter left to "wake up". It was gone, fini, null. Period. - techntrek

Amazing you know more than the doctors know.”

“Techyboy knows more than the televangelists and wingnuts who were trying to make political hay out of poor Terry.”

“Ok, but what about the doctors? I doubt it.”

“Who resurrected this thread, anyway, and for what purpose? I thought the whole Terri Schiavo thing was finally behind us.

For the record, when I'm brain-dead, as she was, PLEASE let me go. I want no drugs, no heroic efforts to keep my body alive, just let me go in peace.

And for people who get in the way & try to make a big deal out of my passing & try to prevent me from doing so peacefully, I AM COMING BACK TO HAUNT YOUR A$$, so you're gonna pay for your interference with natural laws! (are you listening, Sarge? let it go, brother, she was dead)”

“The real Doctors are saying that there was no hope for the woman.

"Doctor" Frist said what he said after seeing a video tape and later recanted.

The Medicare Milker was trying to make some of that hay.”

“Ditto that wanderer! GET OVER IT SARGE”

“Yeah Sarge: ”

“"my TT career"

its the toughest job youll ever love”

“Ok, I didn't think I'd have to say this because IT'S AS OBVIOUS AS BEAR ON A ROLLER COASTER, but this kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME. Therefore, the purpose of discussing the Terri Schiavo case is that this situation can be applied to other situations.

Duh.

So, if you don't want to discuss it ... NEWS FLASH ... don't.

I do appreciate that you're reading my posts though and the truth is getting out, even though you're afraid of the truth.”

“"you can't handle the truth"”

“Hell, I'm all for trying it if it could actually help someone. Do I think it would have helped Terri? No. Should it have all been up to the husband? No.”