CNN.com – Schiavo autopsy finds no sign of trauma – Jun 15, 2005:
Schiavo autopsy finds no sign of trauma

LARGO, Florida (AP) — An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband’s contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner’s office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

So the question now is, when will everyone apologize to her husband?  He was accused of a lot of different things, and the autopsy has pretty much cleared him of everything.  I remember her parents saying some pretty rude things about him… and the government, too.

What are the chances of getting Dubya to apologize?

What’s worse is that I heard that her family is now disputing the results of the autopsy.

He said that after her feeding tube was removed, she would not have been able to eat or drink if she had been given food by mouth, as her parents’ requested.

“Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not,� Thogmartin told reporters.

Her parents were wrong.

He also said she was blind, because the “vision centers of her brain were dead,â€? and that her brain was about half of its expected size when she died 13 days following the feeding tube’s removal.

Wrong again….

Michael Schiavo said his wife never would have wanted to be kept alive in what court-appointed doctors concluded was a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery. The Schindlers, however, doubted she had any such end-of-life wishes and disputed that she was in a vegetative state.

….

They believed her condition could improve with therapy.

However, doctors said her reactions were automatic responses and not evidence of thought or consciousness, and Thogmartin’s report went farther.

“The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain,� he said. “This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons.�

During the seven-year legal battle, federal and state courts repeatedly rejected extraordinary attempts at intervention by Florida lawmakers, Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress and President Bush on behalf of her parents.

Supporters of the Schindlers harshly criticized the courts. Many religious groups, including the Roman Catholic Church, said the removal of sustenance violated fundamental religious tenets.

About 40 judges in six courts were involved in the case at one point or another. Six times, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. As Schiavo’s life ebbed away following the final removal of her feeding tube, Congress rushed through a bill to allow the federal courts to take up the case, and President Bush signed it March 21, but federal courts refused to step in.