March 24, 2005
Jeb! touts Miracle Cure Prayer Rug for Schiavo
Continuing to prey on Terri Schiavo, Jeb! got together with a doctor and just made some shit up about her yesterday. Remember: the important parts of her brain are gone, replaced by spinal fluid, and, unlike lizard tails, brains don’t just grow back. The SP Times has the text of Jeb’s speechifying.
"This afternoon, the Department of Children and Families has filed a renewed motion to intervene in Terry Schiavo's guardianship case. As you know, about three weeks ago, there was a call to the hotline and an investigation began at that time, and new information has come to light after a review of Terri Schiavo's medical records by members of the Adult Protective Services Team, which includes a very renowned neurologist by the name of Dr. William Cheshire, who is a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville."The neurologist's review indicates that Terri may have been misdiagnosed, and it is more likely that she is in a state of minimal consciousness rather than in a persistent vegetative state.
Dr. WIlliam Cheshire is a special doctor - he don’t cotton to all that modern and scientific medical junk, because medical science is simply not as awesome as God.
The doctor who believes Terri Schiavo probably is not in a persistent vegetative state is a Jacksonville neurologist who recently caused a stir in the science community over his opposition to stem cell research.Dr. William P. Cheshire Jr., 44, picked by the state to help assess Schiavo's condition, is an assistant professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville.
A married father of four children, Cheshire has a master's degree in bioethics and has established himself as an antiabortion, Christian critic of modern medical science.
Will someone please nominate Dr. Cheshire for a Nobel Prize - he’s feelin’ just a little left out.
"Although Terri did not demonstrate during our 90-minute visit compelling evidence of verbalization, conscious awareness or volitional behavior," he wrote, "yet the visitor has the distinct sense of the presence of a living human being who seems at some level to be aware of some things around her."Mr. Bush called Dr. Cheshire a "renowned neurologist," but he is not widely known in the neurology or bioethics fields. Asked about him, Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, replied, "Who?"
Dr. Cheshire, who graduated from Princeton and earned a medical degree at West Virginia University, did not return calls to the Mayo Clinic seeking comment. The clinic said in a statement that his work on the Schiavo case was not related to his work at the clinic and that the state had invited his opinion. "He observed the patient at her bedside and conducted an extensive review of her medical history but did not conduct an examination," the statement said.
Dr. Caplan said that was not good enough. "There is just no excuse for going in and making any pronouncement about the state that Terri Schiavo is in unless you're going to go in and do some form of technologically mediated scanning that would overturn what's on the record already," he said.
Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist and medical ethicist at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has examined Ms. Schiavo on behalf of the Florida courts and declared her to be irredeemably brain-damaged, said, "I have no idea who this Cheshire is," and added: "He has to be bogus, a pro-life fanatic. You'll not find any credible neurologist or neurosurgeon to get involved at this point and say she's not vegetative."
He said there was no doubt that Ms. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. "Her CAT scan shows massive shrinkage of the brain," he said. "Her EEG is flat - flat. There's no electrical activity coming from her brain."
Related: The Amazing Miracle Prayer Rug
