From The Detroit Free Press, 6/17/05:
http://www.freep.com/news/metro/dickerson17e_20050617.htm
Schiavo and the charlatans
BY BRIAN DICKERSON
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he had no regrets.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said he had no apologies.
And Dr. Bill Hammesfahr, the neurologist who assured millions of TV
viewers that Terri Schiavo's condition was eminently treatable, said
he had no comment.
It's understandable that all three men were at a momentary loss for
words this week when they learned that a postmortem examination of
Schiavo's withered brain had demolished virtually every claim they'd
made about her medical condition last March.
(You know, back in the good ol' days when the scientists hadn't quite
caught up with the propagandists, and when shameless opportunists like
Frist, DeLay and Hammesfahr could score hours of free airtime just by
uttering Schiavo's name.)
But how, in the name of decency, can they square their previous
statements about Schiavo with what we now know to be true?
Here, for the record, is a reminder of what each man did say:
Frist, speaking on the Senate floor March 17:
"Based on the footage provided to me, which was part of the facts of
the case, she (Schiavo) does respond."
DeLay, in a March 18 speech to the Family Research Council:
"One thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the
visibility of what's going on in America. That Americans would be so
barbaric as to pull a feeding tube out of a person that is lucid and
starve them to death for two weeks -- I mean, in America that's going
to happen if we don't win this fight."
Hammesfahr, in a March 21 interview on Fox News:
"Terri is completely aware and conscious and responsive. She is like a
child with cerebral palsy. We have kids in the Pinellas County school
system every day that are much worse than her, that we're educating."
Now, after an unusually thorough autopsy, we know that each of these
assertions was certifiably brain-dead.
Schiavo could not have been responsive, much less "lucid," when
congressional Republicans decided to make her the hapless poster child
for their "culture of life" campaign.
Her brain had atrophied to half its normal size, and neither her
doctors, nor the Pinellas County public schools offered her any hope
for recovery.
What's in order now for these bloviating charlatans is a triple
serving of humble pie.
For Frist, I suggest something like this:
"I apologize to Michael Schiavo, and to other Americans who may have
erroneously concluded, based on my representations as a licensed
physician, that Mr. Schiavo misled the public about his wife's medical
condition."
For DeLay:
"Another thing God has brought us is irrefutable evidence that I am
utterly out of my depth when it comes to assessing neurological
damage. I won't do it again."
And for Hammesfahr:
"As the autopsy results make clear, my prognosis for Terri Schiavo's
recovery was utterly fanciful. (And yes, I lied about having been
nominated for a Nobel Prize in medicine.)"
The facts speak for themselves, of course.
But couldn't Frist, DeLay and Hammesfahr at least acknowledge them?
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And the biggest clown of all, Jebby Bush, has decided to investigate
Michael Schiavo because his li'l ego was hurt and he doesn't like
losing.
Harry
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