TERRI AND MICHAEL

I doubt this will be the last word on Terri, especially from the radical right, but it would be nice if some apologized for their smears and lies, starting with DeLay and Frist.

Schiavo Autopsy Finds No Sign of Trauma
By MITCH STACY
Associated Press Writer
6/15/05
Link

LARGO, Fla. - An autopsy released Wednesday found no evidence to contradict the diagnosis that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state after her 1990 collapse, backing up her husband's contention that she would not have recovered if she was given additional therapy as her parents requested.

"There's nothing in her autopsy report that is inconsistent with a persistent vegetative state," said Dr. Stephen J. Nelson, a medical examiner who assisted in the autopsy.

Thogmartin said that Schiavo's brain was about half of its expected size when she died March 31 in a Pinellas Park hospice, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed in a wrenching right-to-die dispute that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House and divided the country.

He said 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.

From another AP report:
Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin concluded that there was no evidence of strangulation or other trauma leading to her collapse. He also said she did not appear to have suffered a heart attack.
Thogmartin says her brain was "profoundly atrophied" -- and that the damage was "irreversable." He also says, "The vision centers of her brain were dead" -- meaning she was blind.

UPDATE: UPDATE: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/news/061505ap_nw_schiavo.html

Thogmartin said that Schiavo's brain was about half of its expected size when she died 13 days after her feeding tube was removed.
"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."