Michael Schiavo says that feeding a person through a tube is keeping that person alive artificially and his brain-damaged wife Terri Schiavo wants to be starved to death instead of given food and water through a feeding tube.
Michael's lawyer, George Felos, is a "right-to-die" advocate who "knows" that Terri wants to be starved to death. (Read on.)
And Judge Greer presumably applied the law to the facts, as he routinely does, and respected Terri's wish to die, based on what he considered "clear and convincing evidence."
Even though it was oral.
And tainted by the self-interest of Michael and his relatives' relationship to him.
And, in order to find the conflicting evidence "clear and convincing," Judge Greer had to reject the personal and religious concerns of Terri's loving Roman Catholic parents and the disinterested, directly on point testimony of an ashamed friend of Terri, who found the courage to tell the world she had told a cruel Karen Ann Quinlan joke privately to Terri, and found herself upbraided by Terri, a Roman Catholic of the view that where there is life, there is hope.
It was Judge Greer, not the disinterested witness, who was confused as to when Ms. Quinlan died.
But, it is Terri who may pay the price for judicial error.
Why do so many people want to keep Terri from dying of starvation and thirst?
Because there is clear and convincing evidence that Terri would NOT want to be starved to death.
Because starving someone to death is cruel and inhuman.
Because Terri should not be sacrificed to please Michael and his attorney and to spare Judge Greer from embarrassment,
Better to frustrate a bad husband and his lawyer and to embarrass a judge than to let an innocent woman starve to death.
(Or an innocent man.)
Some women marry the wrong men.
Like Laci Peterson and Terri Schiavo.
Scott Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife and unborn son Connor.
Michael Schiavo has not been indicted for any crime, much less attempted murder.
Instead, he and his lawyer, George Felos, have found a judge (George W. Greer) who has accommodated their request to starve Terri to death.
Felos is best known for winning Guardianship of Browning, a landmark case on the so-called "right" to refuse or have withdrawn unwanted medical treatment.
Why is food and water considered "medical treatment"?
How does the use of a feeding tube to deliver it transform food and water into medical treatment?
According to Felos.
A self-described "agent" of God who champions death.
In his oddly titled book, Litigation as Spiritual Practice, describing his feeling on the eve of trying an ultimately successful (for him) tax case, Felos wrote:
“I felt like an empty vessel, a vehicle through which Spirit does its own work. I felt deep gratitude for being endowed with the abilities that allow this work to be done through me. In a sense I lost, at least for that moment, a personal agenda. I became an agent and God was the principal. All I needed to do was permit the work to come through me.”
After the fundamentally flawed Florida Supreme Court’s affirmation of his pro-death position in the Browning case, Felos wrote: “A profound satisfaction welled up. I believed I had made a difference. The result of my efforts would touch many lives, now and in the future. I felt proud to be an attorney and was grateful to God for this extraordinary opportunity. I still am.”
Felos insists:
"The force that created today’s Hospice also propels the right-to-die movement. We sense that keeping one alive against his wishes—artificially perpetuating the body once the spirit is ready to depart—is a defilement of life’s final rite of passage. It appeared so obvious to me that the ability to die with dignity, as that term is defined by each individual, is an essential personal right.”
God did not really want Abraham to kill his son Isaac, Mr. Felos.
And Jesus died for the sin's of humanity and rose Lazarus from the dead instead of hastening the death of anyone, Mr. Felos.
Felos' alleged personal relationship with God is highly unusual.
And other people should know about it.
In his book, Felos described an incident that occurred while he was engaged in a “right-to-die” case, very involved in the hospice movement and traveling by plane.
Felos wrote that he "wonder[ed] what it would be like to die right now” and “indulged the thought by imagining the plane starting to lose it trajectory and descend.”
So what happened?
The plane lost its trajectory and descended!
Creating chaos in the cabin as people began to realize the plane was going to crash, Felos wrote.
“Needless to say, the juxtaposition of my imagined death and the possibility of a real demise heightened for me my different reactions. I assure you, my hubris in assuming that I would meet a life-ending crash with equanimity was not lost on me," Felos added.
As Felos told it, the pilot of the plane later told the passengers that an unexplained problem with the auto pilot caused the momentary descent.
And:
“At that instant a clear, distinctly independent and slightly stern voice said to [him], ‘Be careful what you think. You are more powerful than you realize.’ In quick succession [Felos] was startled, humbled and blessed by God’s admonishment.”
Felos claims to have had a significant spiritual experience during a ten day retreat at the Kirpalu Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox, Mass., in April, 1988.
If that's true, it's best to avoid the place.
The experience supposedly “birthed a personal transformation of immense and unexpected proportions."
Felos went to the retreat in April, 1988, "wanting a change in [his] life and... return[ed] home with [his] old life vaporized.”
Felos had experienced his “initial spiritual awakening in [his] early twenties" and "spent the last few years of [his] mid-thirties backsliding.”
Describing his “superconscious experience,” Felos wrote that he "was drunk with God,” resulting in his inability to walk on his own and his "predominant expression [being] laughter and a grin just short of it.”
“I had imprinted upon me the purpose of life—God-realization—and in the knowing of this purpose came instant fulfillment. Although to some I reckon the above sounds like metaphysical gobbledygook, I will attest there exists a Universal Consciousness that not only can be experienced by us but is us," according to Felos.
It's not only God who supposedly spoke to Felos in a special way.
Felos' son spoke to him.
BEFORE he was conceived!
Talk about a precocious child!
One day at his office, Felos was “hammerstuck."
"While almost seeing stars like a comic book character, I heard the soul of my yet-to-be-conceived child emphatically shout: ‘I’m ready to be born…will you stop this fooling around!’ … The voice I heard was distinctly male, and I beamed with the idea I had a son—or was going to have a son—or sorta had a son out there—or something like that," according to Felos.
Felos' ex-wife supposedly had a similar experience.
The same woman who later broke up with Felos, resulting in great pain for Felos.
“No amount of water could douse the fire of the rage I was experiencing—rage at my wife, rage built up over years held tightly in control, rage of lifetimes of human suffering," Felos wrote.
Don't take it out on Terri Schiavo, Mr. Felos.
Felos claimed to have communicated on a soul-to-soul basis with Mrs. Browning, the unfortunate woman whom he used to in his right-to-die campaign.
“As I continued to stay beside Mrs. Browning at her nursing home bed, I felt my mind relax and my weight sink into the ground. I began to feel light-headed as I became more reposed. Although feeling like I could drift into sleep, I also experienced a sense of heightened awareness. As Mrs. Browning lay motionless before my gaze, I suddenly heard a loud, deep moan and scream and wondered if the nursing home personnel heard it and would respond to the unfortunate resident. In the next moment, as this cry of pain and torment continued, I realized it was Mrs. Browning. I felt the mid-section of my body open and noticed a strange quality to the light in the room. I sensed her soul in agony. As she screamed I heard her say, in confusion, ‘Why am I still here … why am I here?’ My soul touched hers and in some way I communicated that she was still locked in her body. I promised I would do everything in my power to gain the release her soul cried for. With that the screaming immediately stopped. I felt like I was back in my head again, the room resumed its normal appearance, and Mrs. Browning, as she had throughout this experience, lay silent.”
“I knew without a doubt what had transpired was real and dispelled the thought as intellect’s attempt to assert its own version of reality.”
And Felos described a previous encounter with Mrs. Browning this way:
"Such a deep, dark, silent blue. I stared as far into her eyes as I could, hoping to sense some glimmer of understanding, some hint of awareness. The deeper I dove, the darker became the blue, until the blue became the black of some bottomless lake. 'Mrs. Browning, do you want to die ... do you want to die?' I nearly shouted as I continued to peer into her pools of strikingly beautiful but incognizant blue. It felt so eerie. Her eyes were wide open and crystal clear, but instead of the warmth of lucidity, they burned with the ice of expressionlessness."
Eerie, indeed!
A self-described “crusader” for the “right-to-die," Felos relishes his status as a news celebrity, and admits he is “exhilarat[ed]” to see himself on television.
Felos wrote in his book: “I was getting pretty good at trying my case in the media and shaping public opinion. … Developing a good ‘sound bite’ helped, but so did the media’s support of the cause. Some of my best quotes appeared on the editorial pages.”
To be sure, the secular media is a big part of the problem.
Responding to media requests after Florida's then Governor Martinez vetoed the bill permitting the removal of feeding tubes which was inspired by the Browning case, Felos wrote:
"{T]here I was on the holiday news—Mrs. Browning’s white knight, stalwart at his covered desk, intently crafting her plea of last hope to the Supreme Court. Did I love it! And given the strenuous effort, I much appreciated the positive reinforcement.”
"[W]hite knight"?
"[S]talwart"?
Meaning "marked by outstanding strength and vigor of body. mind, or spirit"?
"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" Isaiah 5:20
In the Schiavo case, Felos is out to establish a right of a husband to starve his wife to death by removing her feeding tube, based on his claim that she had said she did not want to be kept alive artificially, not on a single document, and HIS relatives' testimony to that effect.
What a goal!
Scott Peterson may NOT have murdered his wife Laci.
No one witnessed him do so.
And the medical cause of her death has not been ascertained.
Not enough of her body was recovered.
It's possible that Laci chocked to death on a carrot and Scott then disposed of her body (and the body of their unborn son Connor), because he feared that no one would believe that he had found her already dead and feared that he would be blamed for her death by carrot.
That's more plausible than the notion that Terri wants to be starved to death.
None is so blind as he (or she) who will not see.
Not all so-called "right-to-death" advocates believe that Terri Schiavo wants to be starved to death.
As they learn more facts, they realize that Terri is being hastened to death under circumstances that even a right-to-die advocate can recognize as plainly inadequate.
Even a right-to-die advocate wants a free choice by the person who will die sooner rather than later, not a forced choice made by a person interested in inheriting and remarrying.
Especially when Terri's history of trauma has not adequately investigated.
In Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist John Grogan saw some light.
What caused his conversion?
"[U]ncomfortable details" about Michael Schiavo.
The "devil is in the details, uncomfortable details that raise sticky moral dilemmas."
The devil is present, to be sure.
Grogan also wrote: "I no longer so blithely believe Schiavo's feeding tubes should be pulled and her life allowed to end. I'm no longer so sure her parents do not deserve a say in their daughter's future. I no longer am totally comfortable assuming her husband, Michael, who now has two children by another woman, is acting unselfishly."
Michael Schiavo has been living with Jodi Centonze since 1995 and has said he will marry her upon Terri's death.
Terri suffered severe brain damage in 1990 after collapsing.
Michael attributes it to a chemical imbalance caused by an eating disorder.
Terri's parents suspect Michael Schiavo tried to strangle Terri.
That should be checked out, because it bears directly on Michael's credibility.
Grogan noted that Terri's heart and lungs function on their own, and she requires only a feeding tube that might not be necessary if she were given physical therapy.
That doesn't seem like artificially keeping someone alive to him.
"If [Terri] Schiavo merely required spoon feeding instead of tube feeding, would anyone seriously be arguing to withhold food and water?" Grogan asked. "Does not every human, no matter how incapacitated, deserve sustenance?"
Good point!
Grogan added that Michael Schiavo, as her legal guardian, has forbidden any therapy.
It makes one suspicious.
And it led Grogan to conclude that abuse allegations against Michael Schiavo should be investigated.
Better an investigation than a coverup!
The allegations "may be nothing but scurrilous rumor spread to damage his credibility," Grogan conceded.
"But what if there is even a tiny chance he is guilty of abuse? Should such a person be in a position to decide this life-and-death issue?"
When it comes to who is best to decide, Grogan wrote, it's clear that Terri's parents "have proved themselves nothing if not fiercely loyal, utterly committed parents. They might be misguided. They might be in denial. But no one can argue their devotion. They have not given up. They have not stopped caring. They have not stopped loving. Who are we, as a society, to tell them they must?
***
"If the Schindlers want to dedicate the rest of their lives and resources to caring for their brain-damaged daughter, if they want to shower her with attention and affection she likely will never recognize, who among us will tell them they cannot.
“It won't be me."
No Judge Greer, he!
What actually caused Terri Schiavo's alleged cardiac arrest in 1990, which is said to be the reason her brain was deprived of oxygen, resulting in her tragic condition.
Dr. (Michael) Baden studied the 1991 bone-scan report on Terri Schiavo, which was completed on March 5 of that year by Dr. W. Campbell Walker in order to "evaluate for trauma" that may have been caused by a suspected "closed head injury."
Walker listed apparent injuries to Terri's ribs, thoracic vertebrae, both sacroiliac joints, both ankles and both knees.
In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Dr. Baden noted "that the bone scan describes her having a head injury . . . and head injury can lead to" Terri's tragic condition.
The bone scan was done a little more than a year after Terri's collapse.
A fair-minded judge would have demanded and carefully reviewed Terri's medical records after her husband asked for permission to starve her to death.
Especially since Terri, the starvee-to-be, had received nearly two million dollars to keep her alive and to provide her with food, water and therapy, and her husband/guardian would inherit what remained when she died.
Tax-free!
What would that judge have read?
This:
NUCLEAR IMAGING
03-05-91
BONE SCAN
Indication: Evaluate for trauma
Procedure and findings. Multiple gamma camera images of the axial [trunk] and proximal appendicular [limbs] skeleton in the anterior [front] and posterior [back] projections were obtained. following 2.1 millicuries of technetium 99 m HDP.
There are an extensive number of focal abnormal areas of nuclide accumulation of intense type. These include, multiple bilateral ribs, the costovertebral [where ribs and vertebra come together] aspects of several of the thoracic [upper] vertebral bodies, the L1 [lower] vertebral body, both sacroiliac joints, the distal right femoral diaphysis, both knees and both ankles,right greater than left.
Correlative radiographs are obtained of the lumbar spine and of the right femur [leg bone] which reveal compression fracture; minor, superior end plate of L1, and shaggy, irregular periosteal ossification along the distal femoral diaphysis, and metaphysis primarily ventrally. [calcification showing where bones were broken and have healed].
The patient has a history of trauma, most likely the femoral periosteal reaction reflects a response to a subperiosteal hemorrhage and the activity in L1 correlates perfectly with the compression fracture which is presumably traumatic.
The presumption is that the other multiple areas of abnormal activity also relate to previous trauma. Additional possibility would be neoplastic bone disease, widespread disseminated infectious bone disease or multiple bone infarcts from abnormal hemoglobin.
CONCLUSION: Multiple areas of abnormal scintigraphic [actinographic?] accumulation, some of which are radiograph for differential as discussed above.
W. Campbell Walker M.D./mjt
Dictated 3-5-91
Transcribed 3-5-91
Lee Memorial Hospital
Dr. Walker was deposed.
Herewith an excerpt from the pages 64 and 65 of the deposition transcript:
Q Would a kick be the kind of direct blow
23 that would produce that femoral abnormality?
24 A That would be a possibility, yes.
25 Q Would being thrown into a sharp furniture
1 corner?
2 A That would be a possibility.
3 Q Would being struck with some sort of
4 blunt object like a golf club or something do it?
5 A Yes.
Mr. Grogan is right about the need for an investigation.
Terri Schiavo must be saved!
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Email: GaynorMike@aol.com
