Terri Schaivo autopsy

The Terri Schaivo autopsy results were made public on Tuesday. In order to get the facts straight, I sent a correspondent, Emily Lutella, to Tampa, Florida, to interview the medical examiner firsthand. The following is the interview in it's entirety:*

Emily: Dr. Thogmartin, I understand that Mrs. Schaivo's autopsy report confirms that she was in a persistent vegetative state.

M.E.: the autopsy showed that Ms. Schiavo's condition was consistent with a person in a persistent vegetative state.

Emily: So does that mean she was or she wasn't?

M.E. "This damage was irreversible. No amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons. That term refers to a clinical diagnosis, not a pathological diagnosis. There was nothing in the autopsy that is inconsistent with persistent vegetative state."


Emily: Do we now know why she collapsed in the first place?

M.E.: "I consider the manner of her death to be undetermined."

Emily: Is there any evidence that her collapse was caused in any way by her husband?

M.E.: "The autopsy showed that physical abuse or poison did not play a role in her collapse."

Emily: What about the assertion that she was bulimic?

M.E.: "There was no evidence she had had an eating disorder before she collapsed, although a disorder was widely suspected because she had diminished levels of potassium in her blood."

Emily: What about the fact that she was able to follow that balloon with her eyes?

M.E.: despite a widely televised video that appeared to show Ms. Schiavo responding to voices and other movement in her room, the autopsy said that Ms. Schiavo was blind in her final days. She would not have been able to eat or drink had she been fed by mouth, as her parents had requested. The autopsy found no evidence that she suffered a heart attack, or that she had been given harmful drugs that may have accelerated her death.




Emily: In spite of her being in that state, it seems that starvation is a particuarly cruel and painful means of euthanasia. In your opinion, does being in a PVS justify starving her to death?

M.E.: "Ms. Schiavo technically died of marked dehydration - not starvation - after her feeding tube was removed."

Emily: Dehydration? Well. That's very different. Nevermind.

Point is: I can accept that Mrs. Schaivo was in a persistent vegetative state as her husband and his lawyer asserts. But, if you are going to euthanize someone, anyone, why starve that person to death (or dehydrate them)? Isn't there a quicker, less painful way to do it? And why was killing her necessary in the first place? Her parents only wanted her husband to release her into their care. Why couldn't he have dome that? This whole sordid episode is just sickening. And, I am afraid, it leads to the proverbial "slippery slope" towards wholesale euthanasia of anyone that we feel has "outlived their usefulness".

* The above interview is a parody, however everything attributed to Dr. Thogmartin is a direct quote from the New York Times' article on the press conference. Emily Lutella is a character from "Saturday Night live" played by the Late Gilda Radner.