Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Ah, THAT was the problem!

By

As everyone knows by now, it turns out that Terri Schiavo’s brain damage was catastrophic and irreversible.  In addition, she was blind, so what may have looked on a videotape like her eyes following visual stimuli was more likely the random movements of eyes that could no longer see.  The autopsy report is here, for those who are able to make sense of the medical jargon (the last 12 pages or so are somewhat more comprehensible).

And yet, let us recall for a moment the actions in this matter of the august leader of the Senate Republicans, DOCTOR Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).  DOCTOR Frist (as he reportedly prefers to be called) told the nation that, in his medical judgment, Terri Schiavo may well not have been in a persistent vegetative state.  This judgment was based on his personal hour-long review of video footage, after which DOCTOR Frist opined that "she certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli."  That informed judgment of course contradicted what Ms. Schiavo’s doctors had been saying for years based on numerous in-person examinations (the usual way of practicing medicine), and turns out to have been completely wrong.  How could DOCTOR Frist have screwed up so badly?

Ah yes.  He had his head up his ass while viewing the videotape (and throughout the entire Schiavo affair).  And therefore his own review of the videotape was hampered as a result of rectal tissue interfering with his brain’s ability to process visual stimuli.  Case closed.

UPDATE (6/17): The conservative, Republican-leaning Boston Herald gets it exactly right.

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. Oh man, I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Republicans are ruining our country by legislating via ideology over practicality. It’s time they face the facts: their policies don’t work. Keeping someone alive for ideology even though they are proven brain-dead and in a persistent vegitative state is cruel and unusual punishment. Pushing through tax cuts that benefit the wealthy only hurt the budget and make it more difficult to fund social programs. Privatizing social security doesn’t benefit anybody. It’s not just a problem of pulling heads out of their own asses; first they need to pull Bush’s hands out because they’re certainly acting like his sock puppets.

  2. The woman is dead. Must we be so ghoulish about this.The autopsy doesn’t prove either side ‘right’ as the ethical questions involved had little to do with her exact state, and even less to do with a post facto knowledge.As an aside, it is impossible to be both brain dead and in a persistent vegatative state.

  4. Dave J: no one is claiming that the autopsy does anything to resolve the ethical questions surrounding end-of-life issues in general, or even surrouding Terri Schiavo in particular. However, DOCTOR Frist was the one who claimed that he had a better handle on Schiavo’s MEDICAL condition than did the doctors who had been treating her for years. The autopsy shows pretty conclusively that DOCTOR Frist was, simply, wrong. The lesson is not that the ethical issues surrouding Schiavo’s treatment were easy – they were not. The lesson, rather, is that politicians in Washington should keep their big stupid mouths shut rather than pontificate about matters that do not (or, rather, should not) concern the federal government and about which they know less than nothing. Instead, they should let the people whose job it is to resolve the issues – families, doctors, and state courts when absolutely necessary – do it.

  5. I was opposed the congressional action by Republicans on this. I felt, among other things, it was a tranparent attempt to use a families difficulties for political gain.Posts like this one evoke the same response in me. Who cares if Frist was proved right or proved wrong? If the autopsy has showed that her brain was fully functional, the congressional action would have been just as wrong as it is with the autopsy we have.Using this for political gain though is disgusting in my opinion. The fact that the Republican did it first doesn’t change that.

  6. Dave, respectfully: If the Republicans hadn’t done it first, we simply wouldn’t be having this discussion at all. We know who Terri Schiavo is because the Republicans used her as a political football — “ghoulishly”, I might add. So, they made themselves the story. The post is about Frist’ outrageously bogus “diagnosis”. It’s not ghoulish to note that the Senate Majority Leader is a buffoon and a charlatan.

Archives