Schiavo doctor a right-to-death activist
Neurologist chosen by husband addressed Hemlock Society
Posted: March 23, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
2005 WorldNetDaily.com
The neurologist chosen by Michael Schiavo to examine his estranged
wife, Terri, is a right-to-die activist who has been a featured
speaker for the pro-euthanasia Hemlock Society.
Dr. Ronald Cranford testified in the court cases before county court
Judge George Greer that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative
state with no hope of recovery.
"I've seen her," he told CNN. "There's no doubt in my mind,
whatsoever, she's in a permanent vegetative state. Her CAT scan shows
extremely severe atrophy to the brain. And her EEG is flat. It doesn't
show any electrical activity at all."
His diagnosis has been disputed by Dr. William Hammesfahr, who said,
"I spent about 10 hours across about three months and the woman is
very aware of her surroundings. She's very aware. She's alert. She's
not in a coma. She's not in PVS."
Hammesfahr added, "With proper therapy, she will have a tremendous
improvement. I think, personally, that she'll be able to walk,
eventually, and she will be able to use at least one of her arms."
"There's no way," responded Cranford. "That's totally bogus."
Cranford is a member of the board of directors of the Choice in Dying
Society, which promotes doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia.
He was also a featured speaker at the 1992 national conference of the
Hemlock Society. The group recently changed its name to End of Life
Choices.
In 1997, Cranford wrote an opinion piece in the Minneapolis Star
Tribune titled: "When a feeding tube borders on barbaric."
"Just a few decades ago cases of brain death, vegetative state, and
locked-in syndrome were rare," he wrote. "These days, medicine's
'therapeutic triumphs' have made these neurologic conditions rather
frequent. For all its power to restore life and health, we now
realize, modern medicine also has great potential for prolonging a
dehumanizing existence for the patient."
He explained that while landmark legal cases like those of Karen Ann
Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan demonstrated it was "sensible to stop
treatment in patients lingering in permanent vegetative states," it
was now time to look beyond those cases.
"The United States has thousands or tens of thousands of patients in
vegetative states; nobody knows for sure exactly how many," he wrote.
"But before long, this country will have several million patients with
Alzheimer's dementia. The challenges and costs of maintaining
vegetative state patients will pale in comparison to the problems
presented by Alzheimer's disease."
The answer, he suggested, was physician-assisted suicide.
"So much in medicine today is driving the public towards
physician-assisted suicide," he wrote. "Many onlookers are dismayed by
doctors' fear of giving families responsibility in these cases; our
failure to appreciate that families suffer a great deal too in making
decisions; our archaic responses to pain and suffering; our failure to
accept death as a reality and an inevitable outcome of life; our
inability to be realistic and humane in treating irreversibly ill
people. All of this has shaken the public's confidence in the medical
profession."
He blamed "right-to-lifers" and "disability groups" for discouraging
families from making the choice for euthanasia. He applauded European
values that embrace euthanasia.
"But here in the United States, many caregivers wouldn't consider not
placing a feeding tube in the same patients," he wrote. "It's hard to
understand why. If we want our loved ones to live and die in dignity,
we ought to think twice before suspending them in the last stage of
irreversible dementia. At it is, it seems that we're not thinking at
all."
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