Terri Schindler-Schiavo, pre-1990

(April 1, 2005) The biggest medical story of modern times involving an individual person is playing itself out in full view around the clock on the cable television news channels, on the Internet, and in the mainstream media. The case, of course, involves Theresa Schindler-Schiavo, a seriously disabled, 41 year old woman who died on March 31.

Terri Schindler-Schiavo was basically in good physical health except for being brain damaged after collapsing and experiencing cardiac arrest in 1990. In recent years she had received nutrition through a feeding tube in her stomach. On March 18, the tube was removed, the result of lengthy court proceedings that pitted her husband, who wanted her to die, against her biological family. Thus began Terri Schindler-Schiavo's slow death by starvation and dehydration.

The story of Terri Schindler-Schiavo has totally dominated national news coverage for the past several weeks. The controversy surrounding Schindler-Schiavo - specifically, whether or not the feeding tube that she relied on for nourishment and hydration should be taken out - had previously gained media attention and had provoked legislative actions in Florida. But in the days since the feeding tube was disconnected for the third time on March 18, national interest in her situation reached unprecedented proportions. On March 31, the keywords "Terri Schiavo" returned seven million Web pages at google.com, and over 62,000 news articles. These numbers were, respectively, 350 and 150 percent larger than those generated as a result of a similar search only two days earlier. (In contrast, on March 31, only 7,000 news articles mentioned "George Bush.") In a special session on March 20, both houses of the U.S. Congress passed legislation, S 686, "A bill to provide for the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo" (it was signed the same night by President George W. Bush), instructing a federal judge to undertake a complete review of Schindler-Schiavo's case from the beginning and to reconnect her feeding tube, keeping her alive, in the meantime. On March 22, Federal District Court Judge Whittemore refused to do both.

A series of subsequent appeals by Schindler-Schiavo's biological family, her parents Mary and Robert Schindler and her siblings Bobby and Suzanne (Vitadamo), to federal and state courts similarly went nowhere; every court that considered the appeals, ruling only on procedural or process grounds rather than reviewing the facts, found that the Florida judge who originally heard Terri Schindler-Schiavo's case starting in the mid-1990s had acted within the law.

With so much having been written and broadcast about the Terri Schindler-Schiavo case, I decided at this time to examine several points that might be relevant to people interested in alternative medicine and medical freedom of choice.

But first, it is necessary to summarize and clarify some essential points that are often overlooked or are unknown to people who have not been closely following the story. The Terri Schindler-Schiavo case is not about an individual's "right to die." Few of Terri Schindler-Schiavo's supporters dispute that right, when expressed unequivocally and preferably in writing. It is rather about the rights of disabled people. In the National Review (March 29), Rich Lowry writes: "They say that Terri is being 'allowed to die.' No. She is being made to die. All across America, in hospitals, mental wards, and institutions for the severely disabled, there are people who, if we withdrew our care for them, would die. We wouldn’t call this 'allowing' them to die. We would call it scandalous neglect."

Beginning in the mid-1990s, basing his decisions on slim and selective grounds and consistently overlooking a mountain of evidence and testimony to the contrary, Pinellas, Florida County Circuit Judge George Greer determined that Ms. Schindler-Schiavo, when she was in her early twenties almost two decades earlier, had expressed a preference to die if she ever became seriously disabled. The source of this information was the man she married in 1984, Michael Schiavo. (For the past ten years, Michael Schiavo, who has not divorced Terri, has lived with another woman, Jodi Centonze, described as his "fiancée" or his "common law wife" and with whom he has fathered two children - all the while maintaining his status as Terri's "husband" and court-appointed guardian.) Judge Greer also determined that Terri Schindler-Schiavo is in a "permanent vegetative state" as defined by the medical powers that be, and, as such, is a fitting subject for euthanasia. (Terri Schindler-Schiavo, it should be noted, is not terminally ill. If she had continued to be fed, she might have lived for decades.)

In 1992, Michael Shiavo was awarded three six-figure settlements in lawsuits he filed alleging medical malpractice that supposedly led to Terri Schindler-Schiavo's impairment. The largest part of the settlement, $750,000, was supposedly set aside to use for her continued care and rehabilitation. Soon after the settlements, however, any rehabilitation ceased, and Terri Schindler-Schiavo has spent the last ten years essentially warehoused in nursing homes or hospice facilities, with little stimulation and no rehabilitative therapy of any kind - only the minimum nursing care required to keep her alive, including the feeding tube. During this time, Michael Schiavo has relentlessly fought every member of Terri's biological family in court over his intention to have the feeding tube removed as soon as possible so that she would die of starvation and dehydration. Reportedly, he spent large amounts of the settlement money on attorneys' fees and not on care for Terri.

In recent months, as the story has gained wide public interest, evidence and testimony have come to light, some of it relating to sworn affadavits filed years ago, by both Terri Schindler-Schiavo's professional care givers (nurses), clinicians, neurologists, other experts, and friends suggesting that Terri is not "brain dead" at all - that she is not in the "permanent vegetative state" that Michael Schiavo and his hired experts and the courts have maintained. There has also been an impressive amount of testimony suggesting that Michael Schiavo was abusive to his wife and that she had announced her intention to divorce him before she suffered cardiac arrest in February 1990.

This writer has been following developments involving Terri Schindler-Schiavo for some time. Part of the context that I have observed, otherwise completely overlooked in discussions of the case, is that, on any given day, one can search and quickly find (new) article after article in so-called leading scientific and medical journals that essentially provide the philosophical, intellectual, clinical, economic, and political underpinnings for control - and for legal and ethical justifications for tragic situations that people like Terri Schindler-Schiavo now find themselves in. In other words, in all of the discussion of "who is to blame" for the appalling starvation death of Schindler-Schiavo, the responsibility arguably begins with the U.S. medical Establishment. Tim Padgett, the Miami bureau chief for Time magazine, made an offhand comment on The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel on March 30, noting that the laws affecting people like Terri Schindler-Schiavo and the disabled have been changed during the past two decades at the behest of physicians who are redefining everything relating to mental impairment including levels of consciousness and what constitutes awareness and viability vs. "vegetative states." During that time (the past two decades), the legal, judicial, and political communities have responded and the laws have been changed accordingly - to provide, in this writer's opinion, the justification for what is essentially the cruel and unusual torture and murder of Terri Schindler-Schiavo and untold numbers of others in full, or at least partial, view of society.

Medical doctors are now essentially in charge of society's ethics. (This situation was described a quarter century ago by the late Robert Mendelsohn, M.D., who observed that doctors had replaced the clergy as the "priests" of modern society.) That power shift explains the parade of "medical ethicists" in print and on TV lately who insist, in their confident, definitive, and condescending way, that what's happening with the "disabled" including Terri Schindler-Schiavo is at it should be.

In the practice of modern medicine, the doctor's hand that heals has also become the hand that kills. For several decades, I have observed and written about this phenomenon (including chilling examples of sometimes lethal medical tyrannies involving individuals/victims unfortunate enough to be caught up in medical-legal-political controversies, like parents of children with cancer, for instance) - but the abuses are much more obvious and overwhelming now as the medical profession has become ever more powerful and as it has turned into one of the leading enemies - if not the leading enemy - of individual freedom and autonomy.

CAM Experts Weigh In and Advise "Pull the Plug "

Rather than come down on the side of life and the rights of the disabled to live in the case of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, two leading proponents of CAM (complementary alternative medicine) strongly advocated the death of Schindler-Schiavo. Meanwhile, the attorney representing Michael Schiavo, George Felos, who specializes in euthanasia and who was the principal public advocate for pulling the plug on Terri Schindler-Schiavo, is a proponent of a variety of "New Age" teachings, including meditation, yoga, and thought projection.

It was especially noteworthy - and surprising to this observer - to observe the role of Deepak Chopra, M.D. in this case. Chopra is reportedly the all-time best selling self help author in the world and a proponent of Ayurveda and integrated medicine. Chopra appeared on a number of programs discussing the Schindler-Schiavo case including a live television interview on CNN Live From. . . on March 25.

Another CAM authority is Joseph Fins, M.D. Fins has a lengthy list of credentials and academic positions, including director of Medical Ethics at New York Presbyterian Wilde Cornell Medical Center. Central to this discussion, he served for two years (2000-2002) as a panel member of the White House Commission on Complementary Alternative Medicine Policy (WHCCAMP), to which he was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

On March 24, Fins appeared on Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN.

Perhaps the most bizarre "New Age"-CAM connection to the Terri Schindler-Schiavo case resides in the person of George Felos, the 53 year old attorney who has represented Michael Schiavo in the latter's lengthy quest to have Terri's feeding tube disconnected. Felos, who has specialized in so-called right to die cases since 1989, highlights the fact that he is a spiritual seeker, and a follower and practitioner of yoga and other esoteric models including thought projection.

James A. Smith Sr. cites excerpts from Felos' 2001 book, Litigation as Spiritual Practice, and has added his comments.

While the mainstream spin on the Terri Schindler-Schiavo case essentially claimed that supporters of Schindler-Schiavo's right to live were mostly fanatical right wing Christian fundamentalists, a surprising number of high profile individuals on the left spoke out in support of Schindler-Schiavo, including Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, and former presidential candidate Rev. Jesse Jackson. On March 29, Jackson traveled to Florida to counsel the Schindler family and to lobby the Florida legislature for action to save Terri's life. Nader and Wesley J. Smith, author of Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, issued a news release on March 24 advocating "any legal action available to let Schiavo live." In the National Review Online on March 30, Eric Pfeiffer writes "As Wesley Smith. . .says, 'I find it bitterly ironic that the bulk of the money a medical-malpractice jury awarded to Terri for use in making her better instead went into Mr. Felos's pocket to make her dead.'"

In addition to Nader, Harkin, and Jackson, another long-time liberal with impeccable credentials is 79 year old writer and journalist Nat Hentoff. A regular contributor for several decades to the decidedly left of center weekly newspaper TheVillage Voice and numerous other publications including The Nation, Hentoff wrote an article on March 29, "Judicial Murder," that, for anyone who reads it, should put the Schindler-Schiavo case in an entirely new light of clarity.

The same day, Hentoff was a guest by telephone on Michael Savage's national radio talk show, The Savage Nation.

On the radio, Hentoff began by saying that the judicial handling of the Schindler-Schiavo case "has been a systemic failure. I have never seen anything like this in all the years I've been a reporter. The courts have failed, starting with Judge George Greer, who himself is compromised. His ruling was the basis for all the appellate decisions up to and including the Supreme Court. They never bothered to question his rulings, to look at the facts of the case. The other systemic failure was the media. With very few exceptions, all the mainstream papers, the network broadcasts, etc., failed to do their own investigations in the case. They kept copying each other.

"Now this is not a right to die case. It's a disability rights case. . .Nearly every major disability rights organization in this nation filed legal briefs in support of Terri's right to life. . ."

[George Felos, Michael Schiavo's attorney] "has been an avid euthanasia advocate for many years. I have his promotion flyer. He's now open for lectures around the country. He charges $10,000 to $15,000 to talk about this case. . .

"In actual fact, Terri Schiavo is sentient. She can feel. I've talked to a number of neurologists who have actually seen her. What most people don't realize, because the media have ignored this largely, she has never gotten a PET scan, she's never gotten an MRI, there has been no thorough neurologic examination of her and yet all of these experts say, Oh, no, she can't feel anything. I'm not a doctor. But I've done a lot of research on this kind of case. . . She could be what they call locked in. I've talked to neurologists with patients who have been diagnosed with persistent vegetative states erroneously and it takes sometimes two or three more years before they come out. And they say, 'You know what? I've heard everything that went on when people were talking about me.' Can you imagine if that's the case? And this slippery lawyer comes in, spends a long time in her room as she is now in a terminal state, strokes her cheeks and says, 'Oh, isn't she beautiful!' This is one of the most obscene cases if not the most I've ever covered."

Speaking of the legal and judicial authorities in Florida, Hentoff said: "There's a whole sort of coven of people there in a corruption kind of conspiracy. . . This whole thing is compromised from the top to the bottom and back again. . .

"This is one of those decisive moments in American history. The kidnapping of Elian [Gonzalez in 2000] was another one when we sent that poor child back to a life under the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. This is much more serious, not only because it is a human life but because what happens after this, unless there is some kind of legitimate protective legislation - federal legislation - this is going to affect many, many people for years to come who are disabled, who may not know they're disabled yet. In fact, I know a lot of people in the disability community and they keep telling me, 'You know, you people are who not disabled, you're just temporarily able - it can happen to anybody.' That's why this case - and I try to avoid hyperbole - I think is the most important case since the days of the civil rights movement, let's say Brown v. Board of Education [1954]. . .

"The American Civil Liberties Union has been co-counsel with Michael Schiavo all through this. . . I said [months ago to the ACLU director] 'Don't you people realize you haven't looked at the facts of this case!' If Terri Schiavo had been a convicted serial murderer, the ACLU would have been in court tirelessly, demanding due process, DNA testing, extensive tests, etc. This to me is the worst point in the history of the American Civil Liberties union. . .

"I think she is going to die, and that death is going to reverberate in American history for as long as there is American history. I don't think people are going to forget Terri Schiavo."

For more information,

Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation

The Empire Journal
Extensive reporting on Terri Schindler-Schiavo