Right-wing propaganda and scientific fact in the case of Terri Schiavo

I was very saddened to read your analysis of Terri Shiavo’s defenders and I assume I fall into the category of individuals whose response has been informed by ignorance. I am disgusted that you would try to turn this into a political argument. You quote parts of my letter, having claimed that you received a barrage of letters, after having gone to great length to suggest that those of us who responded to your article were misinformed Christian fundamentalists. I would like to tell you I am not a Christian. I would also like to inform you that I am a socialist who lives in the United Kingdom, and have relied on your site for analysis of world events for the past three years. I have always admired the writing of WSWS. But this has sickened me.

I would like to inform you that I am the mother of a child that is being fed by gastrostomy having been brain damaged at the age of four months. So I think I would be qualified to comment on the so-called diagnosis of PVS. My daughter is now nine years old. My daughter will always be dependent upon me for all her care. My daughter could very easily be diagnosed as suffering PVS. However, like Terri she is cognitive and aware of her family, our friends and able to communicate her needs. I have watched the videos of Terri. Have you? In these videos I see a woman who, although impaired by the brain damage suffered, is able to similarly respond to her caretakers and parents.

Secondly, to attribute the reaction of those who wish Terri to be treated with dignity to the right-wing press is incorrect. In the mainstream press and on the Internet, the majority of journalists coming from both the left and right have continued to distort and misrepresent the truth. I have been following Terri’s life for the past two years and I have found journalists on both sides of the political spectrum resorting to lazy journalism and quoting from official sources and from Michael Schiavo. Very rarely have her parents been allowed to express their opinions and feelings about Terri’s case. Your article was no exception. I have read exactly the same points you made in the right-wing press. That is surprising to me.

Perhaps to a reader with no prior knowledge of Terri Schiavo, your article will appear to be well researched and sourced. It was for this reason that I wrote to you, hoping that you would at least take the time to look more deeply into the situation. I am disappointed that you did not and that you chose to misrepresent who I am and what I stand for. I was completely humiliated by the way in which you used my letter to make the point that I was part of a fundamentalist, right-wing, Christian constituency and misinformed.

Your position is clearly hostile to Terri and her parents. If we wish Terri to “die with dignity” then why not give her a lethal injection and be done with it? To allow her to die a slow death by dehydration and starvation is the cruelest thing imaginable. It is this image that I as a human being and mother cannot shake from my mind. If the idea is to allow her to die with dignity then why not use euthanasia? Besides having the tube removed, Terri is being refused water and food orally. We treat animals with more dignity.
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A majority of the letters to the WSWS, however, support Terri Schiavo’s parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, and their efforts to have the feeding tube restored. Some of these letters are simply abusive, or express a fundamentalist religious viewpoint raised to the level of hysteria. But the most characteristic feature of the letters purporting to defend Terri Schiavo is the lack of information, confusion, or outright ignorance they reveal.

This reflects several interrelated features of contemporary America, including the grotesque falsifications pumped out by Christian fundamentalist and ultra-right groups and their media mouthpieces such as Fox News, and the refusal of the “mainstream” media, as well as the Democratic Party, to mount any serious opposition to this pollution of public discourse.

This barrage of lies has to some extent disarmed the public. Many people are instinctively opposed to the campaign of right-wing hysteria on the Schiavo case, and uneasy over the constitutional implications of the congressional intervention. Opinion polls show overwhelming public opposition to the intervention of Bush and Congress. Nevertheless, there is a general lack of clarity on how to resist this right-wing offensive. The corruption of the media and the spinelessness of the liberals combine to disorient public opinion.

This is bound up with the lowering of intellectual and cultural standards in the US resulting from a protracted and relentless assault on science and rational thought. This takes the form of attacks on the science of evolution, areas of investigation such as stem cell research, and a serious approach to history. As a result of this officially sanctioned drive to “dumb down” the population, large sections of the public find it difficult to understand the issues involved in the Schiavo controversy. The general debasement of intellectual life, moreover, renders many people vulnerable to religious prejudices.

The falsehoods peddled by the right wing fall into two major groups: first, claims that Terri is not in a vegetative state, but conscious, aware, even responsive; second, that she is the victim of abuse by her husband Michael, who should therefore be disqualified as her guardian. We will examine each in turn.

Letter writer CR rejects our report that, according to numerous neurologists, Terri Schiavo has no brain function. “This, I am afraid, is patently untrue. Terri is able to communicate with sound and facial expressions. The doctors who examined her, for reasons known to themselves, have dismissed these reactions as involuntary reflexes!”

CR cites an account of an eyewitness who was in Schiavo’s hospice room (it isn’t clear from the letter if this is CR herself or someone else), declaring that Terri attempted to respond affirmatively when asked if she wanted to live. CR writes: “She has been filmed looking deeply into her mother’s eyes and responding with great pleasure to her mother. Doctors and therapists who have examined Terri also assert that with therapy Terri’s condition could improve greatly. Unfortunately, Michael Schiavo has denied Terri this therapy, despite a colossal payout meant for such purposes. Not one penny has been used to rehabilitate her.” Letter writer RR writes: “Mr. Martin wrote that Terri has had no brain function for 15 years. This appears to be a serious misrepresentation of her condition. That said, when Bush says ‘We must err on the side of life,’ he should consider other tactics to get his way than cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions. We can’t be pro-life and pro-war.”

While RR at least acknowledges the cynicism of Bush’s position, both he and CR are deeply mistaken about Terri Schiavo’s medical condition. There is no credible medical evidence to dispute the diagnosis of a persistent, and now permanent, vegetative state. Only two doctors have been quoted in the media opposing this diagnosis, both of them representatives of the Christian fundamentalist right, one with a direct financial interest in supposed “therapy” for the irredeemably brain-damaged.

Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School who was called in by the Florida courts to examine Terri Schiavo, said: “You’ll not find any credible neurologist or neurosurgeon to get involved at this point and say she’s not vegetative.” He told the New York Times, “Her CAT scan shows massive shrinkage of the brain. Her EEG is flat—flat. There’s no electrical activity coming from her brain.”

Repeated neurological examinations have confirmed that Terri Schiavo’s cerebral cortex was irreparably damaged by the oxygen deprivation caused by a stoppage of her heart in 1990. In the absence of oxygen, the complex cells of the cerebral cortex, which control all the higher intellectual functions, including sensation, reasoning, emotion and the feeling of pain, begin to break down. In Terri’s case, they have degenerated into a liquefied state from which there is no possibility of recovery. As Michael Schiavo asked in one court hearing, “Can you regrow a brain?”

There are two bases for rejecting this scientific evidence. The first is the religious conception that essentially denies the material basis of consciousness. Even without a functioning brain, goes that argument, Terri Schiavo has a soul, and to allow her to die is murder.

This argument is irrefutable by reasoned argument, because it is irrational. But to make it the basis of medical decisions and public policy is to destroy the constitutional separation between church and state and make the dogma of the Christian fundamentalists and the Roman Catholic Church a law for every American. Moreover, it would compel the indefinite prolongation of life support for every terminally ill patient, no matter how bad their condition: an act of surpassing cruelty, both for the dying and their families.

The second basis for denying the sad reality of Terri Schiavo’s condition is the argument made by CR and others, based on her seeming responsiveness to visitors. The principal “evidence” here is the videotape circulated by her parents, which is selectively edited from hours of footage to give a false impression to the viewing public, who are not aware how the tape was put together.

Neurologists have explained repeatedly that, unlike a patient in a coma, the victim of a persistent vegetative state is wakeful, with eyes open and moving randomly. To immediate family members, even an occasional apparent response to an external stimulus may seem proof that their loved one is still “with” them, in some sense. This is an understandable misconception, which is now being cynically exploited by those who care nothing for Terri Schiavo the person, but seek to exploit her as a right-wing symbol.
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