For Those Only Interested in the Facts
In my comments section regarding Terri Schiavo, I have been challenged more than a few times to "get my facts straight" (though curiously only one person ever pointed to any specific fact he disputed). Well perhaps those informing the court's "findings of fact" don't quite have their facts straight either in their CT scan diagnoses of Terri Schiavo's "Persistent Vegetative State."
Via Michelle Malkin, I discovered Code Blue Blog, run by a Radiologist who challenges every single Neurologist who testified in court - or on television or newspaper or wherever - as to any diagnoses arrived at by examining the CT scans of Terri Schiavo's brain.
CodeBlueBlog Issues $100,000 Challenge to Terri Schiavo Neurologist Experts
Via Michelle Malkin, I discovered Code Blue Blog, run by a Radiologist who challenges every single Neurologist who testified in court - or on television or newspaper or wherever - as to any diagnoses arrived at by examining the CT scans of Terri Schiavo's brain.
CodeBlueBlog Issues $100,000 Challenge to Terri Schiavo Neurologist Experts
I've watched a steady stream of neurologists, bioethicists, and neurologist/bioethicists from Columbia, Cornell, and NYU interviewed all week on Fox and CNN and MSNBC. They all said about the same thing, that Terri's CT scan was "the worst they'd ever seen"or "as bad as they've ever seen."
Here's the problem with these experts: THEY DON'T INTERPRET CT SCANS OF THE BRAIN. RADIOLOGISTS DO.
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Posted by Doug on
Wednesday March 30, 2005 at 6:49pm
CodeBlueBlogMD on PolySciFi - Ha! Thanks...I understood the proposition before I offered... If I use cases with a similar degree of atrophy, there are no methods to determine the level of functioning of the person -- but that's my whole point.
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*point2point*
from the British Medical Journal - "Results: Of the 40 patients referred as being in the vegetative state, 17 (43%) were considered as having been misdiagnosed; seven of these had been presumed to be vegetative for longer than one year, including three for over four years."
Quite frankly, I'm speechless. That you would link to such a thing to prove a point is really quite beneath you and the previous arguments you've so passionately laid out.
Until you make a point that goes beyond the fact that you're freaked out, I don't know how to respond.
It's relevant information. A huge portion of the "pull the tube" crowd is placing total confidence in the court's ruling that she is "vegetative." That ruling was made on the basis of neurologists testimony interpreting CT scans. This is a post citing an expert in interpreting such scans. The "wager" framing of the issue comes from him.
If you'd like to suggest an alternative presentation, I'm all ears. But "ignore this, because it's uncomfortable to acknowledge" is an option I reject.
That's what I object to.
Doubt it will succeed. But it is certainly no more loaded than the doctor on Larry King last night stating he was "105%" certain that his diagnosis of the CT scan was correct.
In the face of those folks going full-bore media-circus, what should their counterparts do?
I don't agree with you regarding the inappropriateness of this kind of rhetoric in this case. The only "circus" quality in it is aimed squarely at the medical experts who have been doing the talk-show circuit making definitive pronouncements on this exact matter to great effect.
On the crude side this has lead to descriptions of Terry like this one in my comments section: "a brain dead corpse that has been kept alive for 15 years." On the more reasonable side, it has lead to people like this one Muzzy described speaking with: "The key in Terri's situation, for her, was that - as everyone knows - she is brain-dead and PVS, therefore it is the right thing to let her go and that only her husband can decide that."
I see Code Blue Blog's rhetoric here as specifically attempting to grab the attention of those people who believe this matter was definitively settled beyond reasonable doubt by the medical experts in court. Those folks have certainly not been moved by simply pointing out disputing experts in the past - like the one the NYT wrote off as a "right-wing religious extremist" for disputing this exact issue.
But it's time to wratchet down the rhetoric in any case. Terri died this morning.