Has the Schiavo case Become a Political Football?

Yesterday Sun Hudson, the nearly 6-month-old at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, diagnosed and slowly dying with a rare form of dwarfism (thanatophoric dysplasia), was taken off the ventilator that was keeping him alive. A Houston court authorized the hospital's action, and Sun died shortly thereafter. Today's Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News have most of the details

Then at 2 p.m. Tuesday, a medical staffer at Texas Children's Hospital gently removed the breathing tube that had kept Sun Hudson alive since his birth Sept. 25. Cradled by his mother, he took a few breaths, and died.

this is the first time in the United States a court has allowed life-sustaining treatment to be withdrawn from a pediatric patient over the objections of the child's parent. (The Dallas paper quotes John Paris, a bioethicist at Boston College, as its source.) If true, the unique Texas statute under which this saga was played out contributed in no small way to the outcome. As one of the laws co-authors (along with a roomful of other drafters, in 1999) let me explain.

[have] legislation flown to him overnight by military plane for his signature.

Although Hopper claims to have a doctorate "in neuroscience" on his website, in his under-oath affidavit his only claimed Ph.D. is in counseling psychology. According to the bibliography he provides, he's never had any research published in specialized neuroscience journals. In fact, apart from some allegedly "in press" articles, he hasn't published anything in over a decade - and the majority of his publications before that point appeared in Somnology, a journal edited by - what a coincidence! - Dr. David Hopper. (Somnology, by the way, is the study of sleep disorders.)

Terri Schiavo: Do politicians really care or are they pushing their agenda? * 34657 responses


Politicians really care 11%

Pushing their agenda 89%

While we at American Council on Science and Health have been determined to remain on the sidelines of the raging national debate about the fate of Terri Schiavo (this is largely a legal and ethical issue, not a scientific one), we cannot remain silent about the outrageous misrepresentation of scientific facts about this case that has been occurring in the past ten days.

The medical reality of Ms. Schiavo's case is this: She has been in what is medically referred to as a "permanent vegetative state" for the past 15 years, ever since her heart temporarily stopped (probably due to the severe effects of an eating disorder), depriving her brain of oxygen. Brain scans indicate that her cerebral cortex ceased functioning -- probably just after she experienced cardiac arrest in 1990. Ms. Schiavo's CAT scan shows massive shrinking of the brain, and her EEG is flat. Physicians confirm that there is no electrical activity coming from her brain. While the family video repeatedly shown on television suggests otherwise, her non-functioning cortex precludes cognition, including any ability to interact or communicate with people or show any signs of awareness. Dozens of experts over the years who have examined Ms. Schiavo agree that there is no hope of her recovering -- even though her body, face and eyes (if she is given food and hydration) might continue to move for decades to come.

Those are the harsh facts.

Thus it was shocking that Sen. Bill Frist -- a heart surgeon before becoming Senate majority leader -- went to the Senate floor twice last week to argue that Florida doctors had erred in saying that Terri is in a "persistent vegetative state." How did Frist arrive at this diagnosis? From watching the family videotapes.

Frist's comments were picked up by journalists, including FoxNews's Fred Barnes, who cited Sen. Frist as an authority in a debate with Morton Kondracke on "The Beltway Boys" last week.

Yesterday, there was another public challenge to Ms. Schiavo's well-established diagnosis: Florida governor Jeb Bush announced that a "very renowned neurologist," Dr. William Cheshire, had concluded that Terri had been misdiagnosed and that she was really only in a state of "minimal consciousness" rather than a persistent vegetative state. He used this "new diagnosis" to argue that "this new information raises serious concerns and warrants immediate action."

As it turns out, Dr. Cheshire is not "renowned" as a neurologist -- his limited publications focus on areas including headache pain and his opposition to stem cell research. Dr. Cheshire never conducted a physical examination of Ms. Schiavo, nor did he do neurological tests. Dr. Cheshire is director of biotech ethics at the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, a nonprofit group founded by "more than a dozen leading Christian bioethicists." Everyone is free to be guided by a personal agenda -- and it is clear that Dr. Cheshire has his.


Let's call tripe when tripe is served. All of us are entitled to our own personal views on the Schiavo case, what her fate should be, and who should make decisions for her. But all of us should be united in rejecting politically-generated junk science.


Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan is president and founder of the American Council on Science and Health. She is a life-long Republican.

DrewDad's quote, "Removing the feeding tube is ending medical intervention.

Applying a flamethrower (or lethal injection, or smothering, etc.) is euthanasia.

Quite a difference."

Thank you, DrewDad for seeing the DIFFERENCE. It seems some people's arguments are just stupid ones, because they are so hell bent to prove something that is not remotely a comparison.

So, if in fact the brain scans "confirm that there is no electrical activity coming from her brain", why is it an absurdity to claim that she would not and can not feel pain?
Although a hot topic in metaphysics and neuro-philosophy, the medical field largely acknowledges pain as a brain sensation--electrical activity, if you will.
Ergo, death by starvation, injection...or flamethrower would result in the same end via alternate means.