There Are None So Blind..

According to Jon Trogmartin, medical examiner and board certified neuropathologist, who was in attendance at the autopsy (as pursuant to Florida chapter 406) of the late Terri Schiavo:

“Her brain was profoundly atrophied. The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain. This was due to diffused hypoxic ischemic damage. There was massive neuronal loss or damage. This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons.

Of note, there was severe occipital lobe necrosis resulting in lateral geniculate nucleus (visual) demonstrated transneuronal degeneration with gliosi. Her vision centers of her brain were dead. Therefore, Mrs. Schiavo had what's called cortical blindness. She was blind, could not see.”

In spite of Dr. Throgmartin’s tongue-twisting medical jargon, the conclusions are stark – massive brain damage, atrophy and total blindness with no possible hope of recovery.

Like most of America this past spring, I was subjected to the heart-rending (and now known to have been carefully edited) videos of Terri Schiavo allegedly following a balloon waved by her father. The St. Petersburg Times has published a link to that particular clip where it becomes evident that Terri was not the only one in the room who had been blinded by her awful reality.

But, none was so blinded by the Terri Schiavo case (or was it ambition) than the Senate Majority Leader, Dr. Bill Frist. Frist, an MD and heart specialist, led the fight to intervene against pulling Schiavo’s feeding tube, claiming he was defending a “culture of life”. In a bid to bring her case into federal court, Congress held its emergency session and passed the Terri Schiavo bill, which allowed her case to be considered by a federal judge. President Bush flew back from his ranch Texas on Palm Sunday to sign it into law.

On March 17th, on the floor of the senate, Dr. Frist made this pronouncement:

"To be able to make a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state - which is not brain dead; it is not coma; it is a specific diagnosis and typically takes multiple examinations over a period of time because you are looking for responsiveness - I have looked at the video footage. Based on the footage provided to me, which was part of the facts of the case, she does respond."

Article Author: Barney F. McClelland

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