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Misleading comparisons offer no hope for Schiavo

The right wing extremists who have latched onto Terri Schiavo in a blatant attempt at self-promotion are dredging up medical cases with so few similarities to Terri’s that comparisons are meaningless, but they still insist that a miraculous cure is just a prayer away. In real life, Terri has lost so much brain matter that virtually every legitimate medical professional agrees that recovery is impossible.

For 20 years, she was silent, a prisoner of a terrible accident that damaged her brain.

But last month, Kansas resident Sarah Scantlin suddenly began to talk. The media called it a miracle.

Could it happen to Terri Schiavo?

"It gave Terri's family great hope," said Randall Terry, the Operation Rescue founder who has been organizing protests on behalf of the Schindlers, Schiavo's parents. "Terri is in a better condition than Sarah was."

Leading neurologists disagree. They say that, as similar as the two women's cases may appear, Schiavo's brain injury is far more severe than Scantlin's. Recovery in cases like Scantlin's is rare, but possible. In cases like Schiavo's, they say, it can't happen.

"This recent case has no relationship to it at all," said Dr. William Kessler, chairman of the neurology department at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. "It's like comparing apples to oranges."
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Kessler said that, based on descriptions of Scantlin's abilities before she began speaking, her damage was less severe than Schiavo's.

People with those two different brain injuries may look the same physically - but their condition is very different. Think of different kinds of infections, Kessler said.

"If you saw two patients who had a fever and trouble breathing, you might think it was the same case," he said.

But one could have an easily cured pneumonia, while the other had usually deadly Ebola, he said.

"To a neurologist, you would never equate those two cases," he said.

To Terry, of Operation Rescue, those opinions don't matter. Scantlin wasn't expected to speak again, he said.

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Terry pointed to such doctors as Dr. William Hammesfahr, a Clearwater neurologist who has examined Schiavo for her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. Hammesfahr has said in court that Schiavo tried to follow simple commands and that her eyes fixed on her family. Hammesfahr, who was called "a self-promoter" in a court order by the judge in Schiavo's case, declined to comment Thursday.

Brain scans show that parts of Schiavo's brain have atrophied and been replaced by spinal fluid. With such severe damage, Schiavo can't show the recovery that Scantlin has, said Dr. Michael Pulley, assistant professor of neurology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville.

"Those types of changes don't reverse," Pulley said. "If you lose big pieces of brain, regardless of what it is - trauma, stroke, surgery - it doesn't come back."

The only documented case of someone recovering from a permanent vegetative state came in the early 1980s, said Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurology professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has examined Schiavo.

And in that case, the patient's scan showed no brain atrophy, Cranford said. "The one thing we learned from that, you look at shrinkage of the brain," he said. "Terri has massive shrinkage."

Schiavo also has more severe brain damage than two patients in a New York study published this month, Cranford said. In that study, the patients diagnosed as minimally conscious showed increased brain activity when they heard audiotapes of loved ones' voices.

Cranford said it's hard for people without neurological training to accept that people in a vegetative state can't recover and aren't aware of their surroundings. They sleep. They wake. They grimace.

"It's very hard, because when you look at Terri Schiavo, you can think she's interacting, but she's not," he said. "When you have loving, caring parents like the Schindlers, you just want to deny they're in a vegetative state. It's a terrible syndrome."
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THE LATEST

Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George Greer is expected to decide today whether to give Terri Schiavo's parents time to pursue appeals. Greer's order preventing Schiavo's husband from removing her feeding tube expires at 5 this afternoon.

We’re down to fundies and quacks pursuing their own agendas, feeding the family false hope in order to keep themselves in the limelight. Punks like Randall Terry and need to be seen for what they are - opportunistic con men skilled in using baseless faith to steer their victims toward a state of delusive dreams.