Schiavo Autopsy Backs Husband On Brain Damage

From the Associated Press:

An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had a massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

Thank God. This mess is finally over.

It is ironic that, while the autopsy report vindicates all of husband's Michael Schiavo's claims that his wife was essentially brain dead, the Bush White House and the Religious Right still believed that she should have been kept alive. If anything, her autopsy provided a glimpse of her vegetative existence. Her brain weighed 615 grams--half the expected weight of a human brain. She was blind because the vision centers of her brain were dead. She could not eat or drink if given food by mouth. The videotapes showing Terri Schiavo nodding, moaning, smiling, laughing, and following the progress of a Mickey Mouse balloon were automated responses with no evidence of thought or consciousness.

Is it right for someone to live in this type of existence?

In the United States, there is not debate as to what constitutes death. Death use to be defined as once an individual's heart stops beating, that individual was declared dead. Now, once an individual's heart stops beating, medical personnel can revive the heart if it is quickly stimulated in time using electric shock. Society has to develop a new definition of what constitutes an individual's death. Is it heart stoppage? Is it brain death? We cannot simply accept science's version of what death is, any more than we can accept what the Bush administration and the Religious Right's version of death. Somehow, we have to find a common ground between the two opposing sides.

I would say that for a human, life is consciousness. Life is the mind. It is the ability to think in abstract terms of ideas, issues, values, thoughts, emotions, desires. It is everything that makes us human--both good and bad. Life is the ability to think. Life begins with the brain and the brains ability to react to its environment. Death would be the lack of consciousness. It would be the lack of any brain activity...The lack of synapses firing, or any neural activity. Death would be the complete lack of any thought. When the brain dies, the body dies.

Medical science should not be quick in defining when the brain is actually dead. Medical science should carefully and methodically test to make absolutely sure that there is no neural activity within that individual's brain. If there is any brain activity, then try different therapies in attempts to stimulate the brain activity. And if there isn't any brain activity, nor is there any hope of regaining any brain activity, then perhaps it is right for the individual to die with dignity. What is the point of living when your brain has no activity? What's the point of living when you have no mind to explore all the endless possibilities of existence? In that case, you're simply a lump of biological material, kept alive through the advances of modern medical science. That's not life.

That's the equivalent of the living dead.