Terri Schiavo II: A rumination on those who traffic in human misery

Guest Post by Morbo

The same right-wingers who brought you creation science and proclaim that global warming is a myth are now promoting a new pseudo-science: The assertion that Terri Schiavo can be brought out of her vegetative state and restored to a meaningful life.

In promoting this view, congressional GOP members cynically exploit a common belief among people who know little about medical science: that there’s always hope.

Schiavo’s eyes follow a ball, they say. She gripped someone’s hand. She moans, makes noises and seems to respond to conversation. Surely she’ll snap out of it soon.

Here’s the truth: Schiavo had no oxygen reaching her brain for more than five minutes. This means her cerebral cortex is irreversibly damaged. The cerebral cortex controls thinking, consciousness, portions of the memory and other important functions.

Without it, there is no awareness of the world around us.

Another portion of the brain, the brain stem, controls breathing, the heart and reflexes. It’s hard to believe that a person who is able to breathe on his or her own and who displays reflex-driven movement can be brain dead, but it’s true.

Such an individual can seem to exhibit signs of life — but it’s an illusion.

“All the things that imply cognitive function do not exist,” Dr. Melvin Greer, a University of Florida neurologist, told the St. Petersburg Times earlier this week.

Greer, who examined Schiavo during the legal action, called the people who claim Schiavo has reacted to them “well meaning” but said what appear to be willful actions on her part are due to reflexes. (I would add that imagination and the will to believe in magic/miracles, two powerful forces in the human psyche, are also playing a role.)

Dr. Walter Bradley, chairman of the Neurology Department at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, noted that a person in Schiavo’s state has no awareness of the world around him or her.

“These reactions look as if they’re real,” Bradley said. “But the thinking brain is destroyed.”

Perhaps the cruelest facet of the right-wing exploitation of this case has been its deliberate promotion of false hopes. I do not blame Schiavo’s parents for latching on to those hopes. They watched their bright, young daughter descend into a vegetative state; their grief must be unfathomable. They are not to blame for grasping the reed of false hope. The blame rests with those proffering the reeds and their enablers.

Instead of helping the parents face reality, members of Congress, most of whom are not doctors and a handful who are (but not neurologists), have “diagnosed” Schiavo by videotape and pronounced her curable. Right-wing talk show hosts have unleashed a parade of quacks who claim that Schiavo will be up and about in a week if only a certain cure is employed.

We’re seen these lowlifes before. They are the “psychic surgeons” who told comedian Andy Kauffman he did not have to die and that, for a price, the cancer from his lungs could be pulled out. They lured the desperately ill actor Steve McQueen, suffering from mesothelioma, to Mexico for coffee enemas and mega-doses of vitamins — again, for a price. They pushed laetrile on the parents of children with cancer.

Some of these people really are deluded and believe their insane “therapies” work. Others are mere hucksters who feed on the last, desperate hopes of those facing death and their families.

Some have political agendas. Others merely want to be on television.

The human race has always been cursed with a type of immoral sub-species that lurks among us, trafficking in our misery. Biologically, they are human, but their lack of conscience and a moral center means they cannot rightfully be admitted to the human fraternity. Morally, something in them is missing. Like cockroaches, they scurry forth from the woodwork now and will not go back unless the harsh light of scrutiny and exposure is placed firmly on them. Let it shine.

I wish there were real miracles in the world. I watched my own father waste away in a hospital bed and die too young. I regret every day that he’s not here to play with my son. They would have enjoyed one another. Yet wishing could not have saved his life. Human existence has its share of cold realities. Better to face them full on then fall for the scams of those who would inflate your hopes then puncture them for a quick buck or a four-minute sound bite on the Fox News Channel.

Schiavo has been in a vegetative state for 15 years. Her cerebral cortex is damaged beyond repair. All that could be done for her has been done. The choice now is whether she will be forced to linger in this state or allowed to make a peaceful final exit. Schiavo reportedly told her husband she did not want to linger. Decency demands that we honor that request.