First off, if you look at the list of 7 types of people who can nominate someone for the Nobel Prize in medicine, you’ll note that member of a national assembly is not on the list as it is with the Peace prize. As such, clearly Hammesfahr was not nominated.

Possibly, maybe even probably, but clearly not “clearly.” The only thing that’s clear – beyond the fact that he didn’t win – is that the Congressman’s letter did not itself constitute a valid nomination. Whether or not it resulted in one, we’ll never know. They don’t release that information.

Unlike you, I take everything I hear on this topic with a big grain of salt.

Which has mysteriously lead you to the belief that most of the things that further the Schindler’s case is true and little of what advances Michael’s case is true…including the belief that the GAL of all people got it wrong on the dating thing.

It’s pretty clear that your mind is as made up on this issue as that loser judge’s

of course, yours is not.

If you ever progress beyond the point of automatically writing off as a “quack” every doctor …

As I see it, the court appointed doctor is whom I see as the most reliable. The doctors selected by both sides probably already have their conclusions drawn. Its interesting though that the Schindlers couldn’t come up with 2 neurologists and the one neurologist they did come up with was someone who deals primarily in experimental medicine. Even if you dismiss “Dr. Death”, Michael atleast selected one neurologist who hasn’t been slammed. Beyond that, you’ve got doctors who have examined Terri via videotape at best.

That’s not all you made up, by the way. Your claim that I accept anything from the Schindlers as gospel is patently not true. Unlike you, I take everything I hear on this topic with a big grain of salt. That’s why, at the end of the day, I am not comfortable with the fact that somebody who is maybe brain dead is being starved to death because maybe that’s what she wanted anyway. You appear to be comfortable believing 100% of the “facts” Judge Greer believes, while ignoring 100% of the testimony he chooses not to believe. I don’t have that kind of blind faith in anybody.

It’s pretty clear that your mind is as made up on this issue as that loser judge’s is (whose judicial incompetence has previously helped another abusive husband murder his estranged wife in 1998), and that you are just as eager to dismiss any contrary information as he is rather than entertain the possibility that your original conclusion might have been wrong. If you ever progress beyond the point of automatically writing off as a “quack” every doctor whose diagnosis differs from you the conclusion you want to reach (and yes, there were a lot more than the two you keep harping on), or as “dubious” the testimony of friends, family and even nurses who aren’t Michael Schiavo or his close relatives – we can resume the debate then. Until then, I frankly don’t see the point.

X…just because the Schindlers bring out two quacks, one of whom doesn’t accept insurance and is trying to pass himself off as a nominee to the Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine (a prize that doesn’t exist by the way) and the other of whom isn’t even a neurologist, doesn’t mean that some form of “doubt” has been cast. By this standard, there would be no facts ever in a court case because anybody can get someone who is an “expert” to testify to anything.

I did read the report, but as one who doesn’t accept anything as gospel truth, I don’t “know” that the Schindlers encouraged him to date.

So you won’t accept something coming from an independent observer tasked with getting both sides, but you’ll accept anything coming out of the Schindler camp as pretty much gospel no matter how dubious the source, including the testimony of the nurses, Diane Meyer, etc.

I do blame him for attempting to have it both ways.

How is he having it both ways? The cases have been about what Terri would have wanted, period. The court ordered Michael, as guardian, to pull the feeding tube. If the Schindlers were the guardian, the court would have ordered them to pull the plug. The Schindlers have stated in court that they wouldn’t have pulled the feeding tube even if they had a written, notarized living will from Terri.

Cheshire has never examined Schiavo.

Well, Ronald Cranford (the Kevorkianesque ‘right to die’ advocate who labeled Terri “PVS”) examined Terri approximately 45 minutes, even though it takes weeks of close observation of a patient to positively distinguish between PVS and minimal consciousness.

Examining a patient for 45 minutes and signing them off as PVS is an utter sham. Cranford knew what findings he would write in his report before he even visited Terri.

I don’t know what Schiavo’s age had to do with Meyer’s testimony. If you’re going to argue that she was too young at 19 to have an opinion on this issue, you might argue that she was too young to know what she was doing when she married Michael Schiavo two years later. Besides, Meyer isn’t exactly the only witness to cast doubt on the Clear and ConvincingTM evidence of her supposed intent to die. What do you make of the two nurses who both testified that Michael Schiavo told them they had never discussed what to do if either of them were incapacitated?

As to your last question, any question that can’t be asked without bringing up Randall Terry is too dumb to be worth asking, or answering. To anyone whose mind isn’t made up already, there are plenty of doctors on both sides of the PVS issue. Judge Greer simply chose to believe some of them, and to ignore the others. Which is fine if your theory is that the state should kill everybody who “probably” committed murder, and who “probably” is PVS, and who “probably” would have rather be taken off life support. Some of us demand a higher standard for life and death matters, and Florida law is supposed to reflect that.

IIRC, Meyer’s testimony was also overshadowed by the fact that Terri was much younger when she made those comments.

If “credible” means “believed by Judge Greer, who has no medical degree,” then of course you are right.

So which doctors should be believed? The ones that Randall Terry decides are credible?

One side of me says that the same rule should apply to DNRs and the like. The other says the “clear and convincing” standard is better, if only we could trust all judges to have the common sense to adhere to it. Suppose that a lucid, terminally ill patient tells two doctors, a nurse and his next of kin that he does not want to be resuscitated if he goes into a coma and is believed to have little chance of recovery, and that he wants to sign a living will or durable POA to effect that. His next of kin calls the family attorney, who drafts the document, but the patient goes comatose before he gets a chance to sign it. In his case, the evidence really is clear and convincing, and ought to be respected. But if the price of doing that is giving the Judge Greers of the world a free hand to divine whatever “intent” they want from the flimsiest of evidence, then the price is too high.

What’s terrible about this case, and I don’t mean to downplay the tragedy of Terri’s imminent death, is the fact that her natural/biological parents are being legally prevented from giving food and water to their child.

The urge to provide for children unable to provide for themselves is an innate parental instinct. It is not peculiar to humans. Animals, insects and other living things demonstrate that trait as. Look outside! Its spring! The birds and bees are doing what they always do. Building nests, making babies and then spending most of their waking hours finding and delivering food and water to them.

Caring for one’s children is an inbred, genetic trait of living creatures. The Schindler’s are being legally prevented from doing that which we, as parents are born to do.

Terri’s dying is not the most important issue here. She is fatally stricken, it is impossible to believe that sooner or later the cerebral insult she received 15 years ago would not be a major factor in her death when it arrives. But she is capable of living if fed. Her parents are forced not only to watch her die, but are farcibly prevented from following a basic parental instinct.

Saddam’s forcing parents to watch while their children were brutalized and killed is barbaric enough. But forcibly preventing them from raising a finger to help may we be the cruelest of all.

What our courts and politicians are doing here is much more civilized until we get to the last part. Terri’s parents share much with the parents of Saddam’s child victims in that aspect.