In her affidavit, Sauer-Iyer, who worked for Palm Garden of Largo as a licensed practical nurse while Schiavo was there, claimed Schiavo said “Mommy” and “Help me,” told nurses she was in pain and chuckled when Sauer-Iyer told her humorous stories.

Jeb! made a statement that clearly attempts to influence the outcome of an administrative hearing regarding the nurse’s public discussion of Schiavo’s medical condition. I find it interesting that he still finds it necessary to defend the woman. There’s no way Schiavo could have recovered, made purposeful sounds, laughed or expressed pain. The autopsy report is crystal clear, Terri wasn’t home anymore. This nurse should get a pass for breaking patient privacy rules because she was a well-intentioned zealot? I don’t think so.

Being proven simply wrong about Terri in the autopsy doesn’t stop the culture warriors from pressing on. Don’t let those nasty facts get in the way of a good jihad.

Sen. Mel Martinez, nearly a year after leading the charge for federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, now says he may have been off-base.

“Perhaps this was not in the realm of federal concern. It may have been better left to state courts to deal with it,” Martinez said in a taped interview for Political Connections that airs today on Bay News 9.

No kidding? All it took was a autopsy that showed Terry and no higher brain function. And she was also blind making the video tapes released by her family look like exactly what they were, random movement. I don’t really think the mere facts of the case would dissuade Martinez from using it as a political tool, he was probably referring to the political damage it did him. I’ll watch the BayNews9 interview which airs shortly.

The Jeb! vendetta investigation has ended. After 3 attempts to find an excuse to prosecute Michael Schiavo they have once again failed to find any basis to the governor’s accusations. There was no “new information” and no crime. Hopefully this will lay to rest this matter and Jeb! will find another hobby. From the State’s Attorney’s report:

Without proof of criminal agency, there can be no hope of prosecution. Nor is there justification to use our investigative powers to perpetuate suspicion where, despite extended litigation and a detailed autopsy, we have no proof to suggest that a crime has occurred. Although Dr. Thogmartin did not believe that the cause could be determined with resonable certainty, there are explanations far more likely and logical than any involving criminal wrongdoing.

Gov. Bush Seeks New Inquiry Into Schiavo Case – New York Times
She never would have recovered – St. Petersburg Times
Schiavo timeline troubles governor – St. Petersburg Times
Schiavo Autopsy Report
Move on, Gov. Bush – St Petersburg Times

The governor troubles me. He’s telling the Pinellas-Pasco State’s Attorney’s office to investigate why differing statements were made about the time Michael Schiavo found his wife versus when the 911 call was made. Apparently he has trouble reading autopsy reports. This is how the St Pete Times summarized the autopsy reagrding how long Terri’s brain went without oxygen:

Thogmartin stressed how long Schiavo’s brain went without life-giving oxygen. Her heart stopped beating for five minutes, but after paramedics arrived, it was almost an hour before she had a blood pressure high enough to measure.

Jeb! has a cause in search of a factual base. This does not merit investigation. How could she have been without oxygen for five minutes if Michael Schiavo waited 30-60 minutes to call 911? Had he waited that long she would have been stone-cold dead and this would have never made headlines for the demagogues of the right.

Schiavo Autopsy Shows Massive Brain Damage – AP on Yahoo! News
Felos statement about Schiavo autopsy – BayNews9
Schindlers’ attorney responds – BayNews9
President and Governor Bush stand firm – BayNews9

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.”

That seems pretty definitive. Her blindness shows that the family was simply seeing what they wished to be true. They seemed to want to convince the world Terri was a pilates class away from a triathlon, when the important brain centers that makes us what we are were simply gone.

That footage of Terri seeming to track a balloon was the result of doing the same thing over and over and only showing the results that support a foregone conclusion. Michael said the Schindlers had taped for hours but only released the 10 or 15 seconds that were played on news shows so many times. The Schindler’s played the press like a fiddle and the press lapped it up because it got ratings.

Michael Schiavo’s attorneys made a lengthy statement saying basically that Michael is pleased at the results. He also leaving open the possibility of a defamation suit down the road in responce to a question during the press conference.

The Schindler’s attorneys made a statement that Bob Schindler still thinks his daughter may have been abused. They repeated that bald faced lie that Terri starved to death despite the autopsy report finding of dehydration as the cause of death. I guess it gets more donations to use inflammatory terms rather than truth. They also hold open the possibility of a wrongful death lawsuit. You would think parties on both sides would be sick of court proceedings by now.

The President and his bro’ Jeb! are unswayed by fact, autopsy reports or being wrong about most aspects of the case. I guess they didn’t want to “get into a debate with [themselves]” even when provably wrong.

Has I said prior to the release of the report here: Schiavo Autopsy On the Way, nothing in the report is going to change minds. Who needs scientific reports when you already have the “truth”?

“TAMPA, Fla. – The lawyer for Terri Schiavo’s husband says he’s confident the long-awaited autopsy report on the brain-damaged woman will show no evidence she was abused before she lapsed into a persistent vegetative state. ADVERTISEMENT

More than two months after Schiavo’s death ended an internationally watched right-to-die battle, autopsy results on the 41-year-old brain damaged woman were to be made public Wednesday.

Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin said he will release the autopsy results at an 11 a.m. news conference. Attorneys for Terri Schiavo’s husband, Michael Schiavo, and parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, expect to get the report hours earlier.”

One thing for sure, no matter what the outcome it won’t end the controversy. There are those on the Schindler’s side who will not be swayed be an objective reading of the facts

Schiavo abuse claims were old. – St Petersburg Times

Here’s what really scares me about the religious right, they feel that if the ends are (in their special little world) just, then any means are justified. DCF and the Governor’s office filed a motion after Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed. Here’s a few of the new complaints:

1. Room blinds are not opened enough.

2. Nursing asst. used “air freshener” in bath water, turned out it was aromatherapy oil.

3. Terri is not getting dental work.

4. Terri is moaning in pain from dental work she never got.

Plus there was the usual laundry list of discredited accusations against Michael Schiavo: He abused her. That he didn’t seek rehabilitation for her. That he failed to properly care for her, etc. These allegations were coupled with the statement of a doctor, selected by the Governor’s office, declaring that Terri was misdiagnosed and was not in a PVS despite the fact that he didn’t examine her. The allegations don’t come close to evidence of abuse. It’s compelling evidence of an inablilty to grasp why it’s not OK to simply lie even when you believe you’re right.

I spent a lot of time reading about it when Terri Schiavo came to national media attention last year. The best, objective review can be found on Abstract Appeal, by Florida lawyer Matt Conigliaro. Rather than go through it all again here I created another topic with some of my collected thoughts about the case here.

The debate of this issue make me fear for the future of American democracy. Name calling and demonization of those who do not agree is not useful. People will always believe what they want, but it’s clear to me that the legislative and executive branches have no business in the middle of this sad story. It’s an issue for the courts. I hear many willing to pillory the judge, who is a republican baptist BTW, because he applied the law within the scope of his discretion.

Judge Greer has bent over backwards to give the Schindler’s a chance to prove their case. They were unable to despite excellent legal counsel and wide spread support because they don’t have a good legal case, only an emotional one that makes for good news sound bites. We don’t run courts on emotion, we run them on facts. They have lost on 24 rulings, not because of a widespread left-wing conspiracy, but because they can’t support their position in court.

The worst part IMHO, is we have people trying to pressure Gov. Jeb Bush into breaking the law. And we have blow hards, like Pat Bucannon and Pat Robertson bloviating about destroying the power of the judiciary. We have an independent judiciary for good reason, we have 3 branches of govt for good reason, we have separation of powers for good reason. If you don’t know what they are, turn off 700 Club and take a basic civics class. If you don’t agree with having checks and balances, please find another country to screw up.

Dr. William Hammesfahr believes Terri can be rehabilitated using techniques he pioneered. Wanting to know more about his work I turned to the National Library of Medicine to search information about this “miracle” of neurological rehabilitation. With brain injuries, as a general rule, recovery happens in the first 2 years, after that you’re stuck with whatever deficits are left.

Dr. H has ZERO articles authored and rates no mention in the journal database at the National Library of Medicine.

All I can find on the web are self-serving press releases he made and copies of a report he did on right to life sites. It appears his work has not been submitted for peer review to any journal. All I can say is if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it’s probably a duck, or perhaps just a quack.

As for the touted “nobel prize nomination” mentioned on his website, it was made by his local congressional represntative and was rejected immediately by the nobel committee. Only peers working in the same field may nominate. It’s a bald-faced lie.

Naturally, given his dubious qualifications, Faux News had him saying all the other doctors are wrong and he can rehab Terri. I wonder how much he would make off that and how much his practice has been boosted by his frequent television bloviation? His treatment doesn’t rate publication in peer reviewed journals of neurology. I guess the Schindler’s really, really want to believe.

I also saw this page dedicated to Dr H’s rehab treatment on Quackwatch They seem to strongly believe he’s not legit and his treatments may be dangerous to his patients. The quackwatch.com site is ran by Yale University School of Medicine.

His practice seems to be based on referals from ambulance chasing personal injury attorneys and his dubious treatments of brain injury patients. Patients must pay cash up front and no insurance covers his treatments.

He has also been censured by the Florida Board of Medicine for defrauding patients. The board’s judgement against him can be found here.

He’s an old school snake-oil salesman and charlatan of the worse sort. He’s preying on the hopes of a desperate family for personal gain.

A larger question is why can’t Faux News do simple fact checking and backgrounding? All it needed was an intern, a PC and about 30 minutes to realize Dr. H is not credible. Putting stuff like this on TV just damages the credibility and reputation of the news organization. Oh wait, we were talking about Fox here, truth is optional, if inconvenient to their a priori assumptions.

1. Terri had a cardiac arrest because of a potassium deficiency, probably because of an eating disorder.

2. As a result of the lack of oxygen most of her cerebral cortex (the outer layer of the brain) necrosed (died) and is now replaced by spinal fluid in recent CT scans. This eliminated all higher brain functions. She survives on brain stem activity that regulates heart rate, breathing, temperature, etc. Her EEG shows no brain wave activity. She cannot swallow without danger of choking because of the brain damage.

3. Her husband Michael has fought for years to carry out her wishes and has been backed by judges in 9 cases. He has persevered though media attention, great expense and death threats with a dogged determination to carry out what the courts have held to be Terri’s wishes.

4. Her parents have fought for years to keep the feeding tube in place through a series of emotional appeals and legal tactics. They have persevered through media attention, great expense and death threats to keep Terri alive regardless of what courts have found to be her wishes.

5. This case has dragged on for a decade. It has been through district courts in Florida twice, through the appellate system twice, reviewed by state Supreme Court twice, rejected by the federal Supreme Court thrice. I’m leaving out numerous other court proceedings. Her medical and legal options have been reviewed ad nauseaum. She has been looked at by medical experts numerous times. There has been no rush to judgment.

6. The legislative and executive branches have sought to change the outcome of the case. Illegal executive orders and hasty, unconstitutional laws have been signed and struck down in Florida. Recently a painful private medical issue has become an issue for grandstanding politicians in Washington.

Yet another unconstitutional law has been passed in yet another delaying tactic. The problem with this case has not been a lack of govt. intervention, the problem is too much. The congress and executive branch seek to insert themselves into a private family matter that has already been decided by the courts. This is the clearest violation of the seperation of powers I’ve seen in years.

Her continued existence only serves the emotional needs of her parents, who have testified that they would not have accepted her wishes even if there had been a properly executed living will. In short their grief does not allow them to carry out Terri’s wishes as decided in numerous courts. They simply need to let Terri go. No amount of rehab or treatment will help Terri re-grow large portions of her brain.

See Abstract Appeal for a good objective review of the case and links to some of court documents. Findlaw carries a lot of information and most of the court decisions and reports. A timeline of events in the case can be found at the Univ. of Miami