Politics

Why, what a surprise! (Not.) The New York Times says this about the neurologist who Florida Governor Jeb Bush claims has new information about Terri Schiavo’s condition: his life and work have been guided by his religious beliefs.

Gosh, that’s just the sort of person you want to have making objective, scientifically sound, patient-centered judgments about the condition of someone in a persistent vegetative state. (Not.) The physician, Dr. William Cheshire, has never published an article on the subject he claims to know so much about. He didn’t find any compelling evidence to support his new diagnosis of a “minimally conscious state,” but made it anyway.

What a farce.

Here’s an excerpt from the article. The full article can be found in a continuation to this post.

Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist and medical ethicist at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has examined Ms. Schiavo on behalf of the Florida courts and declared her to be irredeemably brain-damaged, said, “I have no idea who this Cheshire is,” and added: “He has to be bogus, a pro-life fanatic. You’ll not find any credible neurologist or neurosurgeon to get involved at this point and say she’s not vegetative.”

He said there was no doubt that Ms. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. “Her CAT scan shows massive shrinkage of the brain,” he said. “Her EEG is flat – flat. There’s no electrical activity coming from her brain.”