BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Monday, March 21, 2005
FRIST ON SCHIAVO. There's
little doubt that some members of Congress are posturing on the Terri
Schiavo issue. Still, I think it's important to listen to Senate
majority leader Bill Frist, who is, as we know, a
physician.
I am not a Frist fan. But
these
remarks come across as a
genuine attempt by a politician-doctor to understand precisely what
is going on with Schiavo. The transcript is obviously pretty rough,
but it's worth making the effort to read it all the way through. In
these excerpts, I'm cleaning the transcript up a bit for
readability:
I called one of the
neurologists who did evaluate her, and evaluated her more
extensively than what at least was alleged other neurologists had.
And he told me very directly that she is not in a persistent
vegetative state. And I said, "Well, give me a spectrum" from this
neurologist, who examined her. To be fair, he examined her about
two years ago, and to the best of my knowledge, no neurologist has
been able to examine her [since]. I'm not positive about
that, but that's what I've been told.... But at that time, clearly
she was not in a persistent vegetative state.
...
The attorney for Terri's parents
have submitted 33 affidavits from doctors and other medical
professionals, all of whom say that Terri should be
re-evaluated.... Either 14 or 15 of these affidavits are from
board-certified neurologists. Some of these doctors very
specifically say they believe on the data that they had seen that
Terri could benefit from therapy. There have been many comments
that her legal guardian - that's Terri's husband - either has not
been aggressive to rehabilitation to other reports that say that
he has thwarted rehabilitation since 1992. I can only report what
I have read because I haven't met him. Persistent vegetative
state, which is what the court has ruled - I say that I question
it. I question it based on a review of the video footage, which I
spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office here in the
Capitol. And that footage, to me, depicts something very different
than persistent vegetative state.
...
In 1996, a British medical
journal study conducted at England's Royal Hospital for
Neurodisability concluded that there was a 43 percent error rate
in the diagnosis of PVS [persistent vegetative state]. It
takes a lot of time, as I mentioned earlier, to make this
diagnosis with[out] a very high error rate. If you're
going to be causing someone to die with purposeful action,
withdrawal of a feeding tube, you're not going to want to make a
mistake in terms of diagnosis.
Now, it's certainly possible that
Frist's knowledge of medicine greatly exceeds his knowledge of the
facts in this specific case. Just for starters: I thought Terri
Schiavo had undergone tests far more extensive than Frist seems to
believe, and it may well turn out that Frist is wrong. Still, a few
observations are in order here:
1. Frist's comments are clearly
those of a thoughtful, anguished person who understands a lot more
about brain damage than the ideologues on either side of this case
do. I find it interesting that he thinks the video
clips are useful, since a
commonly voiced criticism is that they only represent a few minutes
excerpted from more than four hours of trying. I assume Frist knows
that.
2. Even if Schiavo is not in
a chronic vegetative state, she still has a right to die, whether
Frist and his fellow Republicans like it or not. The courts have
ruled that she expressed a desire to die if she ever found herself in
such miserable circumstances.
3. Which brings me right back to
where
I started on Saturday.
Indeed, if Schiavo really isn't in a persistent vegetative state,
that should make this all the easier. Just ask her! Either Judge
Greer or a designated representative, accompanied by Schiavo's
family, should spend a few hours at her bedside to attempt to
determine whether she is capable of responding to questions about her
fate, as the family's lawyer, Barbara Weller, claimed the other
day.
If she is, and she expresses a
desire to live, then that obviously supersedes what she told her
husband, Michael, many years ago. If she isn't, then we have to
accept that this is a charade, as most of my fellow liberals have
already concluded. At that point, she could be allowed to die with
dignity, and the political grandstanding now under way could be
brought to a rapid end.
GOOGLE 101 AND PUBLIC
SAFETY. The Boston Globe today publishes a
terrifying
story about a website in
which folks caught on the wrong side of the criminal-justice system
can finger people who they believe may be police
informants.
There is a moment of unintentional
black humor. Reporter Kathleen Burge writes:
The Globe is not naming
the website because it is impossible to verify whether all the
people listed there are informants, and because publicizing access
to their identities could jeopardize their safety.
Hmmm ... I didn't time myself, but
I'm pretty sure it took me less than 30 seconds to find the site
based on hints in Burge's story. I'm not going to identify the site,
either. But I'm not going to pretend that anyone can't do what I just
did.
posted at 9:56 AM |
16 comments
|
link
16 Comments:
I'm pretty horrified by the suggestion that I'm about to make, but poor Terri's dignity has long since been tossed aside in this case. So, about bringing cameras into her room and arranging for a live "interview" with her --- I think Larry King would be the best choice for this ghoulish little exercise. If she tells Larry that she wants to live, then obviously the court case becomes null and void and her wish to continue to live should be respected.
However, if it's clear that she's unresponsive, then we should trust the Florida courts on this. That would also get us away from the cherry-picked video that everyone has seen. I know her parents would say she's just having a bad day, but come on.
And Frist? He's running for President and has hitched his wagon to this star. He's free to make armchair diagnoses if he wants (and I'm sure he can do it in a way that makes him seem thoughtful and genuine) but we should also be free to see his words through the lens of a guy running for President who wants to win votes from the pro-life crowd.
On the Globe story: Dan, you must be getting slow in your old age :-). Took me about 10 seconds to find the site.
Two other comments: Does the Globe think its readers are such idiots they couldn't find the site, either? And why are they quoting a snitch who won't give her name?
"But not all the profiles posted on the website are real. The woman who publicly identified the Tewksbury man said that she had knowingly posted false information about people she did not believe to be informants."
Nice. I wonder if somebody could find out who she is and rat her out?
Amy Sullivan has a nice takedown of Frist's history of using his medical degree to make scientifically-dubious political pronouncements at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005893.php
Frist *was* a practicing, licensed physician, it is true.
He *is* also a doctrinaire right-wing idealogue who's running for the GOP nomination in '08.
As such, he is beyond either shame or reasonable examination of an issue.
RE: Google 101 - This story was published 1/12/05 in Herald,one could almost say it was "lifted" from there.
Frist just another chump, who once said he gave up medicine for the money.
Dan, are you kidding? Frist is making a "genuine attempt by a politician-doctor to understand precisely what is going on with Schiavo"?
He's only become involved to score political points with the Religious Right crowd. He was silent when Lauren Rainey was getting her medicaid cut off. He said nothing in support of the Hassan orphans. He's never criticized George W. Bush's Texas Futile Care Law , which allows hospitals to remove life-support against the wishes of family members and was recently used to cut-off support for a conscious, 6-month old Sun Hudson.
Frist is a right-wing ideologue. He made-up his mind and supported federal government interference into the Schiavo case before ever learning a single fact about it --because the Religious Right crowd already had adopted it as a political wedge. Frist wouldn't change his political posture no matter how many doctors, judges, nurses and family members contradict him.
And come on, d'ya think the millionaire Religious Right groups can't pay for "experts" to back-up whatever view they want?
Nelson, Roslindale
Gee Dan,
Are you going all Howard Kurtz on us? Frist does nothing in good faith. I'd feel more positive about his samaritan trips to Africa (or wherever) if he were less anxious to publicize them. Frist is a political hack, first, last, and always.
Your gut was right--you should have left the Schiavo mess alone.
Dan --
You're a good guy who evidently wants to see altruistic motives in everyone from Bill Frist to Tom DeLay to Jeff Gannon. But I can assure you, as one who grew up in a Southern Baptist household in Tennessee, that Frist and his fellow right-wingers are venal beyond your wildest blue-state imaginings. You need to spend a few years in the Bible Belt to grasp just how pious, mean-spirited and hypocritical -- un-Christian, actually -- these demagogues are.
Please stop giving them the benefit of the doubt -- or you will lose the support of the very readers who make your blogging possible.
P.S. Run, don't walk, to Dahlia Lithwick's posting today on Slate. She makes mincemeat of Frist and others (like you) who have based your medical conclusions on a very short and over-exposed video clip.
Dan,
Before you trust Frist's word as a cardiac surgeon, perhaps you should read this from Respectful of Otters. And she's opposed to euthenasia, by the way.
http://respectfulofotters.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_respectfulofotters_archive.html#111120735448873570
Re: "I'm pretty horrified by the suggestion that I'm about to make, but poor Terri's dignity has long since been tossed aside in this case. So, about bringing cameras into her room and arranging for a live "interview" with her --- I think Larry King would be the best choice for this ghoulish little exercise."
Awww... don't be horrified, Paul. I actually like your idea! But CNN and Larry King's people would never in a million years go along with it -- Not because of the "ghoulish" factor -- but because they're definitely fearing, of course - that GWB's "Live & Let Die" Right-Hand-Man regarding Health and Inhumane Services - Senate majority leader Dr. First N. Last might actually declare Liberal Leaning Larry brain dead!
Besides; if they put the poor woman on tonight; Larry would have to cancel his Earth-Shattering interview with Michael Jackson's Anal Wart Removal Doctor and Personal Valet who CNN has already committed four and ½ hours of air-time to!
Dan - You cut Mr Frist a lot of slack, yet seem to put the heat on Judge Greer. Implying that he hasn't done his job well because he shouldn't only trust all the testimony from doctors, parents, husband, and previous trial verdicts, but should go visit her in person. Yet for Mr Frist, you think it's enough for him to view an outdated video of Mrs Schiavo, and give him the benefit of the doubt when he solemnly says he knows as a doctor that the video shows just how alive and responsive she is. Contrary to what the actual examining doctors have said again and again. At the least, I think you'd have to insist on Frist going to visit her too, before you supported his clap tr...I mean point of view. Then again, I have a nagging suspicion that he'd be a bit creative in his interpretation of what he saw if he were to visit.
phrith@yahoo.com
Something we all have to step back for a moment and admit here...
The power of the web to make so many people concentrate on and perceive themselves as being "experts" or authorities regarding any given topic [in the NY Minute that has past since this story became the must-comment-on topic] is simply astounding.
"You need not tell the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it all. But let all you tell be truth." [Horace Mann]
While it's unsurprising that talk radio blowhards think reading a few editorials and watching a couple video clips gives them sufficient medical expertise to dispute years of first-hand professional examinations and CAT scans of Mrs. Schiavo, it's shocking how many journalists do the same thing.
Dr. Wolfsohn's report is dated Dec 1, 2003 and is publicly available. How many journalists (cough, cough, Media Log, cough) bothered to read it before making judgements on Schiavo's vegetative state or on the sincerity of people like Sen. Frist?
How many journalists actually read the findings of fact in the various legal judgements?
The intellectual laziness and shoddines of MSM "professionals" on the Schiavo case raises the question of whether Dr. Wolfsohn ought to examine them as well.
Nelson, Roslindale
P.S. I also highly recommend Dahlia Lithwick's Slate column.
From the LATimes:
Frist's comments raised eyebrows in the medical community.
Although there are no official rules against the practice, ethicists said, it is generally considered unprofessional for a doctor to make or question a diagnosis on the basis of incomplete information.
As for any religious pronouncements about "right to life," Here's something Susie Madrak snipped from a Salon interview with a bioethicist who happens also to be a Catholic priest:
This is Holy Week, this is when the Catholic community is saying, "We understand that life is not an absolute good and death is not an absolute defeat." The whole story of Easter is about the triumph of eternal life over death. Catholics have never believed that biological life is an end in and of itself. We've been created as a gift from God and are ultimately destined to go back to God. And we've been destined in this life to be involved in relationships. And when the capacity for that life is exhausted, there is no obligation to make officious efforts to sustain it.
Let's not forget that "Doctor" Wolfson is not a practicing physician or even a physician for that matter. According to his curriculum vitae he has law degree and a doctorate in public health. Do you think "he" examined Terri?
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
