Suggest you go to The Smoking Gun site and actually READ the autopsy. Facts hurt those who are unwilling to learn! This is not just the opinion of one doctor or one test. READ--LEARN

I'm not sure the autopsy "clears" Michael of abuse or Terri of an eating disorder, although it fails to corroborate either theory, either. After all, her trauma has to have been caused by something, we just don't know what.

Look, Judith, the time has come to face the facts. The brain damage was so massive Terri effectively died fifteen years ago, and no amount of therapy or faith healing was going to bring her back. She was way beyond disabled, she was toast.

"The brain damage was so massive Terri effectively died fifteen years ago."Um, she wasn't dead. She just needed a feeding tube to continue living, as do many many other people. "no amount of therapy or faith healing was going to bring her back."Wow. Right after the blogpost where I describe Straw Man #1, you give me an example of Straw Man #1.

The parents (and Bill Frist) insisted that Terri could be at least partially rehabilited through therapy. They also insisted she responded to visual stimuli.Both claims have been shown to be false, and it's no straw man - they really made these claims.

If the cause of terri's parents and their "supporters" was so right, then why did they have to rely on lies, slander, insults and demagogery? Those who called the rest of us "Nazis" and a "culture of death" are not people whose moral compass is worth taking seriously.Those who so pompously pretended to be a "culture of life" owe both Michael Schiavo and the majority of Americans an apology for their insults and lies.

"The parents (and Bill Frist) insisted that Terri could be at least partially rehabilited through therapy. They also insisted she responded to visual stimuli.Both claims have been shown to be false, and it's no straw man - they really made these claims."No one knew, in the absence of tests usually done to determine extent of damage, tests which Michael Shiavo refused to allow. Why shouldn't they make those claims? No one knew. Finding out new facts now doesn't make them liars.And as Andrea and others pointed out, no one knows what her brain was like at the point where Michael refused to allow her to continue therapy. It's been 10 years since then."If the cause of terri's parents and their "supporters" was so right, then why did they have to rely on lies, slander, insults and demagogery?"There were many accusations on both sides. I don't know of any outright lies on the side of Terri's supporters. The definition of a lie is that you know that your statement is false. If you believe something to be true and it hasn't been tested yet, and then it's found to be not true, you are not thereby a liar. You are just someone who asserted a hypothesis based on the evidence you had at the time.This also applies to the charges that Bush was a "liar" because he asserted, along with almost every other world leader for the previous 12 years, that Saddam was trying to reconstitute his WMD programs.In my book, misusing the word "liar" is demagoguery, and there is more of it on the left than the right these days.

When the Schindlers and others accused Michael of abusing Terri, with NO CREDIBLE EVIDENCE to support their charges, and despite court records that showed him to be an attentive husband to the end, they were lying. And some of them still are.When the Terri-bots repeatedly deny the very existence of information that is in the public domain, they are lying. Case in point: brain-scans conducted before Terri died showed that her cerebral cortex had been largely replaced by fluid, yet you still repeat the mantra that "no one knew."When Terri's so-called supporters insisted that Terri was actually speaking and pleadinng for her life, they were lying.When those same supporters produced video-tapes carefully edited to give the appearance that Terri was responding to her immediate environment in a meaningful way, and used it to deceive both our elected officials and the public, they were lying.When the far-right dittosphere accuse the competent courts, the medical establishment, and just about everyone else who disagreed with them of "wanting to kill Terri," they are lying. No one "wanted" to kill her; we merely believed, based on widely-available and still-unrefuted evidence, that Terri as a human being was already dead.When these same dittoheads loudly proclaim that they represent a "culture of life," and their opponents a "culture of death," they are lying, just as surely as the KKK are lying when they call black people monkeys or savages.When the far right compare liberals to Nazis, they are lying.Those are all the examples of Christofascist lies that I can think of right now. I'll post more as I remember more, but these should be enough to debunk the "Christian" right's phony moral superiority. Do I really need to post more?

Okay here goes: Her parents may have wistfully hoped she might regain some function, but they were very clear that they loved her the way she was and wanted to take care of her.You're being completely disengenous if you're honestly claiming that you don't remember those on the pro-tubist side making various claims about her being aware of a baloon floating around her room, about the PVS diagnosis being incorrect etc. Catherine Johnson, whom you quoted extensively here, based most of her arguments on the idea that you should always be willing to hope, just as she did with her autistic sons (which for some reason or other had something to do with this debate that I couldn't fathom). Bill Frist, the de facto leader of the pro-tubist side, claimed that he as able to diagnose her based on video tape and he felt that the PVS diagnosis was wrong. And this is not even to bring up the nuttier pro-tubists who circulated stories that she was completely aware and was begging not to be killed etc. At a minimum, these claims of hope of significant improvement in her condition, and claims that the PVS diagnosis was wrong, which were made repeatedly by many, many people on the pro-tubist side have been proven wrong. There were in fact two main subjects of debate: 1) What her medical state was and 2) What should be done about it. Many, many people who were on the "pro-tube" side, including most prominently Bill Frist, supported their position by arguing various things about question 1, all of which have been proven absolutely wrong.This is not to say that there were some who actually had the wherewithal and intellectual honesty to admit that she was in a persistent vegetative state and there was no hope of recovery but they still thought that the wishes of her parents should be followed over what her husband thought were her wishes. If you admitted that the doctor's diagnoses were correct and that it truly was a "no-win situation", with the best case scenario being her kept "alive" at huge cost and very possibly against her explicit wishes, then I commend you. This, in fact, ultimately became my position. This might have been what I would have done were I in a position to decide what should have been done about the case. However, the Flordia judiciary did not look over this matter lightly and they decided differently. Because I respect our constitutional system of government, for me this was the end of the story. I think having a different idea of what should have been done at this point is a "good people can disagree" type of thing. However, calling it "murder" and calling everyone who has the slightest different opinion about this very different case a member of the "culture of death" is ridiculous and sick and to the extent that I bought into that language or apporved those who did I would feel somewhat chagrined.As far as your reaction to the fact that you participated in a completely basesless smear campaign I'm simply flabbergasted. In essence, you're new standard is that it's okay to ask someone "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Don't you feel at least somewhat chagrined that there was absoutely no truth to those rumours yet you played whatever small part in passing them on? How would you like it if someone did something similar to you with their blog? If I'm not mistaken you think that something like that has happened to you and you're none too happy about it. As far as Andrea's thing, I'll respond to it here because she's too unreasonable to comment to and because you linked to it approvingly. She, like you, is trying to separate out completely people who thought that Terri could be miraculously saved, was following baloons around the room, looked okay on that video tape, etc. from the pro-tubist side. A significant portion of the pro-tubist side was composed of people with that "delusional" belief Andrea speaks of. And, generally people on the pro-tube side argued that she was in better shape than those on the anti-tube side, which is why Frist and Delay and Bush and everyone have been so quiet since the autopsy came out. -Eric Deamer

From Derbyshire:"Regardless of the severity of brain damage, it seems to me the moral principle still abides..." Regardless? Regardless? So all those things we heard about Mrs. Schiavo's condition not really being as bad as the husband & the doctors said, was just cynical propaganda? In fact, however bad her condition actually was, the right-to-life side would have held the same position? Then wasn't it dishonest of them to raise the issue of Mrs. Schiavo's actual neurological status? Even if she had had no functioning cerebral cortex at all (which seems, in fact, to have been pretty nearly the case) the right-to-lifers wouldn't have budged -- "regardless"? Which right-to-lifers -- names, please -- made this clear at the time? It sure wasn't clear to me."1. No human life should be contingent as to whether or not another person gives it credibility or not."So if anyone, in any condition, has a metabolism that can be kept functioning somehow, that ought to be done, regardless (!) of what any person -- spouse, parent, eminent neurosurgeon, judge -- thinks? Start building some real big warehouses -- you're going to need them."2. If a family member wants to terminate a human life where the human in question is not able to speak for him or herself, and another family member wants to sustain that life, defer to the family member that wants to keep the human in question alive."This is not currently the law in the state of Florida. If the people of Florida, in their collective wisdom, would like it to be the law, get lobbying. It seems like a fair principle to me... provided you can iron out a definition of the term "family member" that will not produce results just as rancorous as the Schiavo case (which I doubt -- see next point).And what if ALL family members wish to terminate a Schiavo-type life? Should that life then be terminated, even in violation of our reader's point (1)?"3. A fortiori should this be the case where the family member wanting to keep the human in question alive is willing to care for that human in question. (in this case, the parents)."What if the parents are both 90 years old? Prisoners in the state penitentiary? Only doubtfully of sound mind? Stand to gain financially from their caring? Etc., etc."4. It remains true, no matter how many different circumstances one raises, the only direct cause of Schiavo's death was government action, i.e., a court order."At least two of the governments (if you mean, executive administrations) involved -- the Florida govt. and the Feds -- were trying every way they could to find some way around the laws -- laws written and approved through elected representatives, according to state and federal constitutions. The laws won. May they ever do so. And may we ever remain free to change the laws when they no longer satisfy we, the people. -Eric Deamer

Those of you still promoting various Straw Men might find the comments of family and disability activists interesting.I think they make a good point about the bulimia malpractice award.

Judith: calling every argument you can't handle a "straw man" does not make them go away; it only proves you can't handle the arguments like an honest adult. I've seen radical leftists do the same thing, and then wonder why no one takes them seriously.If you want to talk about phony arguments, check out your lame insinuation that we're "scaring" the handicapped with the implication that people WITH demonstrable brain activity would be treated the same as one woman whose cerebral cortex was CLEARLY GONE. You know as well as I do that if Terri had shown ANY brain activity or responsiveness, her feeding tube would never have been removed. This is not about the handicapped in general; this is about ONE PERSON whose mind had left her body long ago.

"your lame insinuation that we're "scaring" the handicapped with the implication that people WITH demonstrable brain activity would be treated the same as one woman whose cerebral cortex was CLEARLY GONE."Over 20 disability rights groups advocated for her. Many went to Florida to join the protestors. One group even held a demonstration/teach-in called "We Love Our Tubes."If you think their concerns are "lame" or that they are unjustifiably scared, take it up with them. But they might just know more about their own concerns than you do.Her cerebral cortex wasn't "GONE." Even the autopsy doesn't claim that. If it was "GONE" she would not have been able to breathe on her own or move at all.In fact there are numerous cases of people who are brain-damaged or in comas being misdiagnosed - it's a justifiable fear."No one "wanted" to kill her; we merely believed, based on widely-available and still-unrefuted evidence, that Terri as a human being was already dead.When these same dittoheads loudly proclaim that they represent a "culture of life," and their opponents a "culture of death," they are lying,"Well, when you call someone "dead" who moves and breathes without help, just because she lost her swallowing function (which may have responded to therapy earlier on) and most of her thinking functions, it's hard not to conclude that your definition of death is suspect. In any case, I agree that "culture of death" remarks are way over the top, and make it harder to discuss the real issues in the case.

judith: we're not calling Terri dead "just because she lost her swallowing function ... and most of her thinking functions;" we're calling her dead because she lost ALL of her thinking functions, most of her cerebral cortex was replaced by fluid, the remaining cortex was compromised, and she showed NO noticeable brain functions for fifteen years. Once again, you're...to put it nicely...misrepresenting other people's positions and statements on the matter.Yes, other comatose people show signs of consciousness and even recover; but not after having most of their cerebral cortex degerate into the slush that showed up in Terri's brain-scans.