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On November 7, 2006, a writer for The Daily Princetonian by the name of Christopher Moses produced a rather scathing opinion piece that bemoaned pro-life activity in politics.
In support of his position that government should take no active role in matters of life and death, Moses pointed back to the case of Terri Schiavo as a sort bellwether of government intrusion into medical cases. He remarks:
"Of course, an autopsy later confirmed that Schiavo had been completely brain dead."
When I read those words, I emailed Mr. Moses to point out his error. Of course, the autopsy did not confirm that Terri Schiavo was completely brain dead. There was no description of brain death in the entire document nor in the Medical Examiner's presentation to the press pool present the day the report was released.
The autopsy stated that, although a diagnosis of Persistent Vegetative State was a clinical diagnosis made with a living patient, there was nothing in the pathology that was inconsistent with the previous diagnosis of PVS and that is certainly a far hike from a diagnosis of brain death. http://news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/schiavo/61305autopsyrpt.pdf
To quote directly from the final report of the Medical Examiner:
"PVS is a clinical diagnosis arrived at through physical examination of living patients. Postmortem correlations to PVS with reported pathological findings have been reported in the literature, but the findings vary with the etiology of the adverse neurological event."
Moses declined to retract or correct his remarks after I had sent him a link to the Medical Examiner's report, stating: "I make no claims to definitive diagnosis nor would I ever expect that a reader would take the phrase "brain dead" as carrying some specific, clinical definition. It's a question of a reasonable person's opinion…"
This is not just an arrogant position, it is utterly dangerous.
Brain death is, indeed, a diagnosis which is defined in the literature as "complete cessation of brain function as evidenced by absence of brain-wave activity on an electroencephalogram: sometimes used as a legal definition of death" and "death when respiration and other reflexes are absent; consciousness is gone; organs can be removed for transplantation before the heartbeat stops."
Neither description is accurate of the condition Terri Schiavo lived with, yet Christopher Moses seems happy to use the term brain dead as a matter of "personal opinion" -- even though he now knows it to be untrue.
"I'm right because I say so" just isn't a good enough excuse for a journalist to fail at sticking to the truth. I would think readers of The Daily Princetonian surely expect some level of honesty -- even in editorials.
Had Moses investigated the autopsy thoroughly, he never would have made such a statement in the first place. Further, had he explored the definitions of PVS and brain death after our correspondence and considered his error, I would have looked upon the matter as nothing more than an honest mistake and you wouldn't be reading this rant right now.
As it is, his actions smack of intellectual dishonesty.
A great many editorialists have made fodder out of the Schiavo case -- some defending the government's obligation to protect the life of an innocent citizen and some seeing the matter as the government intruding into a family's private dilemma. What they have to say on the subject is directly proportionate to how much they actually know about it.
Without a doubt, the Schiavo case is one of the most litigated and most confusing in recent history. The stacks of court documents I have are enough to fill two large closets and I only came into the fray in 2002.
I wouldn't expect a casual writer from Princeton to know every petition, motion, ruling or even nuance of the case simply because the research alone would take years to complete. Having said that, I find no excuse for diagnosing from afar (precisely the thing Moses criticizes Bill Frist for doing).
Further to the previous, after the error is made clear, the writer has an obligation to correct his inaccuracy -- lest he wishes his credibility to be brought into question. In this case, the writer refused and goes merrily along doing what he has accused someone else of.
That's not just uninformed. It's unscrupulous.
Mr. Moses is certainly entitled to his opinion and I'm not entirely in disagreement with his apparent position that politicians are an insufferable lot. My upset with him is for not being thoughtful enough or professional enough to resist the urge to express his opinions as fact -- especially in a case as important as Schiavo.
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/11/07/opinion/16437.shtml
11-11-06
Pamela F. Hennessy is the Founder of the Partnership for Medical Ethics Reform (www.forethics.com) and volunteered as a representative of the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation from 2002 to 2006.
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Country Gazette
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When The Uninformed Become The Unscrupulous