Schiav(owned)

Well, the autopsy for Schiavo has been released, and--to everyone's great surprise--tells us what the more intellectual among us already knew. This woman was horribly and irreversibly brain damaged!

Here's a good story on it.

Some key points to consider from the article (bold italics indicates my own emphasis):

The autopsy showed that Schiavo's brain had shrunk to about half the normal size for a woman her age and that it bore signs of severe damage.

"This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons," said Pinellas-Pasco County Medical Examiner Dr. Jon Thogmartin, who led the autopsy team. He also said she was blind, because the "vision centers of her brain were dead."

...

The finding that she was blind counters a widely seen videotape released by her parents of Terri Schiavo in her hospice bed.

...

In addition, the autopsy found no traces of morphine in her system at her death, although she had been given two doses in the days before she died. The Schindlers had contended that morphine might have been used to speed their daughter's death.

...

Experts said that the autopsy demonstrates how difficult it is for people to recover from severe brain damage.

"People should understand that sometimes, for known or unknown reasons, individuals sustain massive brain injury that for which healing is not possible," said Dr. Karen Weidenheim, the chief of neuropathology at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. "Everything that could have been done was done for this lady for 15 years, and this case is very tragic."

Furthermore, CNN stated that her brain was actually less than half (rather than "about half") the size of a normal female of Schiavo's age. Simply put, this woman had no possibility of becoming a competent fencepost, let alone a functioning human being! As far as those who contend that "God was going to work a miracle," let's face reality here. There had been, what, about 15 years for this miracle to occur? Sorry, if it hadn't happened by now, it wasn't going to happen in the next 15 years!

This fiasco has really raised several very troubling issues in this country, and not all of them pertain soley to euthanasia.

1. The Religious/Conservative Right's willingness to impose their version of religious and moral views upon others. Last I checked, the Constitution guarantees everyone their right to believe in whatever they want--but it doesn't give you a right to impose your views upon others! People seem to forget that one person's right to swing his fists ends at the tip of another person's nose...
   
   
2. Media willingness to lend credence to scientifically inaccurate or questionable accusations. The article from Yahoo! shows at least two points where Schiavo's parents likely made false statements to further their agenda. Namely, that Terri Schiavo was responsive to her surroundings and that Michael Schiavo somehow tried to use morphine to hasn't her death. Nevermind their bogus claims regarding Terri's hopes for recovery and their unfounded accusations that Michael played a role in the initial event that led to her vegetative state.
   
   
3. State executive and legislative branches trampling over the jurisdiction of the judicial branch. (Hey, if the rules don't work in your favor, why not change them?)
   
   
4. Federal executive and legislative branches trampling over states' rights. Congressional Republicans set a troubling precedent by allowing federal courts jurisdiction over a state issue. Not to mention that somewhere along the lines of 40 judges and several different local, state, and federal courts consistently (and, so far as I know, unanimously) ruled in Michael Schiavo's favor.
   
   
5. Lastly, after reading some more articles online and/or seeing some reports on national/local news, it seems there is a large number of people who don't believe the science behind the autopsy! Throughout the fiasco, I never ceased to be amazed at the people who stubbornly/ignorantly turned a blind eye towards all the professionals who almost unanimously declared this woman was beyond hope. Now after medical science has determined beyond a reasonable doubt that this woman was indeed without hope, people still do not believe it! What has happened to people's trust in science? Furthermore, what has happened in education to the teaching of the principles and methodology behind science? Not believing an autopsy report, well, that's just as insane as believing the Earth is flat or that a bullet fired horizontally from a gun would hit the ground at a different time than one dropped vertically from the same height (in a perfect physics world, of course).

It could be said that relatively small scale incidents like this are a barometer for where America is headed--and it certainly doesn't look pretty.