CNS STORY: Schiavo autopsy does not alter church's pro-life stand, official says

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SCHIAVO-AUTOPSY Jun-17-2005 (860 words) With photo. xxxn

Schiavo autopsy does not alter church's pro-life stand, official says

By Nancy Frazier O'Brien
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The autopsy results on Terri Schindler Schiavo are irrelevant to the church's stand in support of her human dignity and against removal of her feeding tube in March, a Catholic pro-life official said June 16.

"Our position was not based on predictions about her likelihood of recovery," said Richard M. Doerflinger, deputy director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, in a telephone interview from Chicago. "It was based on her dignity as a human person."

Schiavo, 41, died March 31, nearly two weeks after her nutrition and hydration tube was removed following a contentious seven-year battle between her husband and her parents. She had been in what doctors described as a persistent vegetative state since 1990, when her brain was deprived of oxygen after her heart stopped.

Dr. Jon R. Thogmartin, medical examiner for Pinellas and Pasco counties in Florida, said in a televised news conference June 15 that Schiavo's autopsy showed that the brain damage she suffered in 1990 was irreversible.

"No amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons," he said.

Thogmartin said Schiavo died of "marked dehydration," not starvation, but that the underlying cause for her collapse 15 years ago could not be determined.

"The only diagnosis that I know for sure is that her brain went without oxygen," he added. "Why? That is undetermined."

Dr. Stephen Milton, a neuropathologist, also participated in the news conference and said, "There was nothing in the autopsy that is inconsistent with persistent vegetative state."

Doerflinger said some of the conclusions in the autopsy seemed "off base," such as the determination that there was no evidence that Schiavo had an eating disorder before her collapse and the assumption that the shriveling of her brain indicated massive brain damage.

When any person is deprived of water for two weeks, his or her brain is likely to shrink, he said.

Doerflinger also said there is "no established degree of brain damage" that cannot be reversed. "There are people walking around whose cerebral cortexes have been largely destroyed," he said.

Dr. Paul McHugh, professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, also criticized the autopsy report, saying it was part of the "typical misleading about doctoring and medicine" that is becoming common.

"I'm not contending that she did or did not have PVS (persistent vegetative state)," he said in a June 17 phone interview. "Either way, that doesn't excuse killing her."

Writing in the June issue of Commentary, a monthly magazine published by the American Jewish Committee, McHugh recalled his early work "as both student and teacher in caring for patients like Terri Schiavo with neuro-psychiatric disorders." He remembered in particular a patient who had once been "the foremost clinical scientist in America" but who "gave little evidence of awareness" 13 years after a botched brain operation.

One day in front of a group of interns, however, the patient responded correctly and in a full sentence to a scientific question posed by McHugh.

"Somehow, deep inside that body and damaged brain, he was there -- and our job was to help him," McHugh wrote. "If we had ever had misgivings before, we would never again doubt the value of caring for people like him. And we didn't give a fig that his EEG was grossly abnormal."

Similarly, Terri Schiavo "was alive," McHugh said in the phone interview. "That's all I as a doctor care about."

He criticized the mind-set that says, "You're worthy if you're productive, and if you're not productive, you're not worthy of life."

"I'm not going to judge if a patient is worthy," he said. "I'm here to benefit the lives of patients."

The Schindler family -- Terri Schiavo's parents, brother and sister -- said in a statement released at the National Right to Life Committee convention in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington that the autopsy report confirmed what they already knew about "Terri's physical condition and disability."

"We all knew Terri was seriously brain-injured," the statement said. The report "also confirms that Terri was not terminal, that Terri had no living will, that Terri had a strong heart and that Terri was brutally dehydrated to death."

"The moral shame of what happened is not erased because of Terri's level of disability," the Schindlers added. "No one would say that 'blind people' or 'brain-injured' people should be put to death. That would be an irresponsible and heartless position to take. Tragically, that is what happened to Terri. As a society, it seems that we have lost our compassion for the disabled."

Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, who visited Schiavo hours before her death, said in a statement that she "did not die from an atrophied brain."

"She died from an atrophy of compassion on the part of her estranged husband and those who helped him to have her deliberately killed," he said.

END

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