Surprised lawyer finds Terri Schiavo alert

(From WorldNetDaily).

All right, for those of you who are scratching your heads and muttering, "Terri who?", here's the deal:

The woman in question is the former Terri Schindler, daughter of Robert and Mary Schindler, who is still married to one Michael Schiavo. In 1990, Mr. Schiavo brought his unconscious wife into a hospital near their apartment in St. Petersburg, Florida. How and why she collapsed, and why her brain was starved for oxygen for several minutes, no one has adequately explained--least of all Mr. Schiavo himself, who was the only witness. (And don't you know how that works?) She has been dependent on a feeding tube for food and water ever since.

Mr. Schiavo initially sued the doctors who cared for her and won a whopping malpractice settlement. He said that he was going to use the money to take care of his wife. But what he has done instead is neglect her in certain critical ways, refuse his assent to medically advisable steps, and lately try to cut off her feeding tube, on the theory that she expressed to him--and again, he's the only witness!--that she would rather die than be hooked up to a tube for the rest of her life. He has also consistently maintained that his wife is in what is known to the medical trade as a "persistent vegetative state"--in other words, she's a human vegetable who will never wake up. She has already had her feedings and rehydrations suspended for ten days--until Governor Jeb Bush won passage of, and signed into law, a bill granting him the authority to intervene in just such cases. That law is now at issue in one of the many cases filed in connection with this sad story.

The biggest problem with Mr. Schiavo's story, other than his conveniently being the only witness and having zero written evidence of her wishes and desires, is that he has since become involved with another woman and has already sired two children on this woman. Add to it that the medical trust fund becomes his to spend upon her death, and what you've got here is a variation on a classic financial theme known as the tontine. (In fact, the tontine is illegal in the USA and Britain because of the severe moral hazard that attaches to all its participants.)

All right, so that's the background. In the last twenty-four hours, Michael Schiavo and his right-to-die lawyer, George Felos, have just gotten a worse problem: Terri Schindler-Schiavo turns out to be alert. Specifically, two attorneys, who have just taken over as lead counsels for Terri's folks, accompanied the folks on a visit to Terri. And they found her alert in every way save one: not being able to express herself. She clearly had the wit, for example, to realize that two of the persons who had come to see her were total strangers--these being the two attorneys, who were seeing her for the first time.

You see, sportsfans, she is not in a coma, and has never been in a coma. Indeed, when her family broke to her the horrible news that her feeding would be discontinued, she actually tried to get out of her chair. What she suffers from is aphasia, which literally means not being able to communicate like the rest of us. She also has suffered damage to that part of the brain that controls swallowing, and that's why she can't eat normally and needs a feeding tube. But she is not in a coma, nor has anyone any medical warrant for saying that she will never communicate again.

This case has personally outraged me for years since I first heard about it. For one thing, we still don't know how she got into the state she's in. That being the case, and given the tontine-like financial incentives that affect Mr. Schiavo, is he really the best person to be in charge of her life and her finances? I think not. And I especially think not, given that he is manifestly guilty of adultery. It would be the worst sort of public policy to condemn a woman to a slow, agonizing death, just so that the husband can be with his "sweet patootie."

For another, the treatment of this case in the mainstream media, and the commentaries on it by liberal interest groups, reek of hypocrisy. I thought they were all advocates for disabled people! I suppose they are--unless they're married to them and are keeping sweet patooties on the side.

You can read all about the case, both from the family's point of view here, and from the public records of the Florida State Courts, here. (Search on the case name Schiavo v. Bush and other court documents having the names Schiavo and/or Schindler.) The WorldNetDaily article also has links to their previous stories on this case.