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MINNEAPOLIS---One of the most outspoken advocates of the right to die movement and of physician-assisted suicide in the U.S. today has died.
 Dr. Ronald E. Cranford, a neurologist and medical ethicist who served for years as the assistant chief of neurology at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minn., died Wednesday in Minneapolis.
Cranford was the neurologist chosen by Michael Schiavo and his attorney, George Felos, as a medical witness in proceedings before Pinellas County probate court judge George W. Greer in 2003, declaring that there was no hope for recovery for brain damaged Terri Schindler-Schiavo and that she was in a persistent vegetative state.
Greer declared that the disabled woman was PVS and ordered her death by removal of her nutrition and hydration. She died March 31, 2005.
Cranford told reporters in 1991 that he wanted to be known as "Doctor Humane Death". He had publicly claimed to have facilitated the deaths of between 25 and 50 disabled patients by removing feeding tubes.
He had been a member of the board of directors of the Choice in Dying Society, an organization created when the Society for the Right to Die and Concern for Dying merged in 1991. Cranford had worked as a faculty associate for the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Cranford had specialized in the field of clinical ethics, more specifically neuroethics, since the early 1970s. During this time, he has served as an advisor or consultant to several national commissions on right-to-die issues. These included the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, primarily the reports on "Defining Death" and "Deciding to Forego Life-Sustaining Treatment"; the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws on the Uniform Determination of Death Act and the Uniform Rights of the Terminally Ill Act; the Hastings Center's "Guidelines on Termination of Treatment and the Care of the Dying"; the National Center of State Courts' project on "Guidelines for State Court Decision Making in Authorizing or Withholding Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment."
He was co-chairman of the Multisociety Task Force on Medical Aspects of the Persistent Vegetative State (New England Journal of Medicine, May-June, 1994), and a member of the task force on the "The Minimally Conscious State." He was chairman of the first national conference (Washington D.C., 1983), and co-editor of the first book, on institutional ethics committees.
As a medical-ethical consultant and neuroethicist, he had been involved with numerous landmark right to die cases in the United States, including Herbert (California), Brophy (Massachusetts), Rosebush (Michigan), Cruzan (Missouri, and U.S. Supreme Court), Torres (Minnesota), Martin (Michigan), Busalacchi (Missouri), Wendland (California), and Schiavo (Florida).
In published articles, including a 1997 op-ed in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, he advocated the starvation of Alzheimer's patients. He has described PVS patients as indistinguishable from other forms of animal life. He has said that PVS patients and others with brain impairment lack personhood and should have no constitutional rights.
Schiavo had appeared with Cranford last fall at a bioethics conference sponsored by the Hennepin County Medical Center when Cranford was honored.
In recent months, Cranford had appeared at several symposiums dealing with the Schiavo case, most recently with Michael Schiavo, Judge Greer and other principals supporting Michael Schiavo in his quest to end the life of his brain injured wife.
He appeared with Judge Greer and others on March 31, the one year anniversary of Terri's death, at Boston University. His most recent public appearance to discuss the Schiavo case was at the University of Pennsylvania bioethics symposium held April 30 and May 1 in Philadelphia. 5-31-06
© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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