KENNEWICK, WASH---Suzanne Vitadamo (left), sister of Terri Schindler Schiavo (right), spoke about her family's struggle to care for her disabled sister in Kennewick on Saturday as one of the featured speakers at the 3rd Annual It's About Life Conference sponsored by the Knights of Columbus Council.

The disabled woman died by way of court-ordered dehydration and starvation at a Pinellas County hospice on March 31, 2005. Suzanne and her family continue to wage a battle to save other people with disabilities through the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, established by the Schindler family in 2000 in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The Foundation seeks to establish a network of attorneys, doctors and other professionals to try to assist medically dependent families in crisis and ensure that they have a fighting chance at life.

"The morality of the 21st Century will depend on how we respond to this simple but profound question: Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human?" Vitadamo told the audience, quoting Wesley Smith, noted author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

"Answer yes, and we have a chance of achieving universal human rights. Answer no, and it means that we are merely another animal in the forest".

She told the large crowd about the closeness of the Schindler family and of the family's fight to try and save the life of the disabled woman. She spoke of the misrepresentations made by the mainstream media, of the bias and the factions intertwined in the case.

"For almost two weeks, my family was forced to watch my sister suffer through the very real and very grisly effects of terminal dehydration. With each passing day, Terri appeared more weakened, thinner, and so very frightened", her sister told the audience. "I listened to the proponents for the so-called right to die movement, defiantly deceive news audiences that what my sister endured was a gentle, peaceful and euphoric demise. I sat on the corner of her bed trying so hard to understand that what I was witnessing was actually real.

Vitadamo said in growing up, her immediate family was extremely close, always looking after each other. "We were raised as faithful Catholics, and took our faith very seriously, attending parochial elementary and high school, and going to mass every Sunday, and all Holy Days of Obligation. In fact, Terri attended mass with my parents the night before she collapsed".

"Terri could be pretty bashful around new people. At home, however, she was a joker. When Terri and Bobby were small, Bobby accidentally locked Terri in a suitcase. Well, Terri thought it was funny to retaliate by pushing Bobby down the stairs! My mom said it was a good thing she had just had carpet put in! She loved to sketch, adored animals and had such a sweet spot in her heart for them. She was a really unassuming, agreeable person who tried to find the good in others".

She told the group that after Terri's sudden collapse on Feb. 25, 1990, while she was home alone with Michael Schiavo, "medical documents would verify that Terri was initially responding to therapy and rehabilitation, beginning to speak by forming words such as "Mommy" and "stop".

In 1993 Michael Schiavo filed and won a medical malpractice lawsuit on behalf of Terri. The jury awarded $1.5 million to be placed in a medical trust fund for Terri's lifelong therapy and rehabilitation.

"The jury based this award in large part on the testimony of Michael Schiavo promising to honor is wedding vows and provide Terri with lifelong therapy and rehabilitation with Michael making no mention of Terri having any type of verbal death wish", Vitadamo said. "Medical documents will also verify that all forms of therapy were ordered stopped by Michael Schiavo sometime in 1992. This was in spite of Terri's improvement and in spite of dozens of doctors that over the years recommend that Terri could be helped with proper rehabilitation and therapy".

She related the incidents leading up to 1998 when Michael Schiavo petitioned the court to remove her sister's feeding tube, after he had unsuccessfully tried to have her killed in mid-1993 by refusing to treat a urinary tract infection that would have resulted in Terri's death if the nursing staff had not intervened.

"In January of 2000, Judge George Greer held a weeklong trial based on hearsay evidence. Just prior to the beginning of the trial, and almost 10 years after Terri's collapse, Michael's brother and sister-in-law suddenly surfaced also claiming that they heard Terri make casual comments that she wouldn't want to live disabled. My entire family, including some of Terri's closest friends testified that Terri never spoke about wanting to die.

"Nevertheless, on Feb. 11, 2000, Judge George Greer ruled that there was clear and convincing evidence that Terri would have wanted to be starved and dehydrate to death instead of having her family care for her for the duration of her natural life.

"We saw that my sister's case made national and international headlines; however people are surprised to hear that her case was not an isolated one, and what happened to Terri had been happening for many years before she was killed and continues to occur every day across our country. In fact, the disabled community had been warning us about this issue for many years prior to my sister's case ever making news.

"Unfortunately, because no one was really paying much attention to the disability community's words of warning over the past three decades about what was happening with end-of-life legislation and litigation, the pro-death doctors, attorneys and lawmakers have been diligently working together to change the laws so that the health care industry and the courts could "legally" kill the disabled and elderly. The laws across our nation now reflect their work and it has become relatively simple to kill a person based on a quality of life assessment.

"Once the laws were changed, the next step was to get the public to accept this quality of life/right to die mentality based on a certain subjective criteria. Obviously, this was something that my family was not aware of when we walked into Judge Greer's courtroom in January 2000.

"So, what are the changes that allow people like my sister to be "legally" killed? One is that feeding tubes are NOW recognized as medical treatment, extraordinary care, or artificial life support. May I would point out that not a single one of us can live without food and water.

"Secondly, is the creation of the persistent vegetative state, or PVS diagnosis.

"It is my understanding that in most, if not all, states if a person is diagnosed as being in a PVS and is being given food and water via a feeding tube, the law will permit you stop their food and hydration. This can even be, as it was in the case of my sister, when the person is physically healthy and is not dying and could live a normal life span.

"Since Terri's death, there have been three or four cases that made the news where people diagnosed as being in PVS have awakened after years. In all of these news articles, you will find that the doctor's always go out of their way to say that these patients are not like Terri Schiavo. Of course they are but if that is admitted, then so is it admitted the Terri was murdered.

"In my opinion, it really all comes down to money. We have a growing number of elderly and tens of thousands of people who are profoundly disabled and need 24 hour care in our nation. The costs to care for these people are seen as a drain on the insurance and health care industry, based on this whole quality of life attitude that I've mentioned.

"Therefore, to help alleviate this expense we are now living in a culture that is making decisions whether someone should live or die based on a cost/benefit rationale.

"Should we be surprised that this is happening?

"In an article in the July 14, 1949, New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Leo Alexander an American doctor interviewed the German physician-defendants before the Nuremberg trials. Dr. Alexander warned that ------ the Nazis' crimes against humanity had "started from small beginnings . . . merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived." That shift in emphasis among physicians, said Dr. Alexander, could happen here, in America. And I'm here today to tell you that is IS happening, and it's happening on our watch!

"Let me tell you what Dr. Ronald Cranford, a physician for Michael Schiavo said.

"In an interview with Sean Hannity on Hannity & Colmes, Dr. Cranford admitted that patients in a "persistent vegetative state" (PVS), as well as the profoundly disabled, lack "personhood" and consequently have no constitutional rights. Cranford bases his position on a redefinition of personhood using "consciousness" as the criterion and also contended that that "consciousness" is the "most critical moral, legal, and constitutional" basis for personhood".

"Then we have our judges.

"In the case of Judge Greer, we found that we were before a judge that saw no value in my sister's life. Sadly, it seems that this type of mindset belongs to a growing number of judges across our nation who are in a position of making life and death decisions.

"Listen to Judge Greer's order on Nov. 22, 2002: "The real issue in this case, however, deals with treatment options for Terri Schiavo and whether or not they will have any positive affect so as to significantly improve her quality of life'.

Attorney David Gibbs who just published a book called "Fighting for Dear Life, The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo", said this about Greer's order:

"What Judge Greer was, in effect, saying was that no matter what condition Terri was in or EVEN if the family could teach her to swallow, to drink on her own, nothing could prove to Judge Greer that any treatment would raise Terri's quality of life to the level where HE would believe Terri would want to stay alive." Vitadamo lashed out against the mainstream media, saying that "In the book, "Dehumanizing the Vulnerable" the author, William Brennan, writes about Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kempf and how Hitler was able to achieve his power by tenaciously advancing what was referred to as the 'the big lie'.

"And it was this, '. . . if the lies are repeated often enough they will be embraced'. If you look closely at how the media handled my sister's case, as well as a host of other life issues, you will see just how eerily similar the two philosophies are".

She quoted from Wesley Smith, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, author and special consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Culture. "I have concluded that media are like a high school clique. They often seem to decide the story first and then fit the facts to their perception. Once the story line is determined, facts that belie their take--even very important and pertinent facts--are often ignored or barely mentioned. Then, reporters who may come late to the story rely on the earlier reports and hence, regurgitate the skewed story line, until error often becomes perceived fact. As a consequence, a materially false impression is left for people who don't follow these matters closely".

"In the case of my sister, I couldn't agree more with Wesley", Vitadamo said. "Many of these "professional journalists" made, and continue to make no effort to thoroughly research and validate the facts they publish regarding what Michael Schiavo, his attorney, the doctors, the autopsy and easily attained public records state about my sister's case. In my opinion, the blatant inaccuracies and lies seems to be a deliberate attempt to revise the facts of Terri's case - as though they can make these lies become truth by repeating them often enough.

"Contrary to what the media writes, Terri was very alive, responsive and able to interact with her family and friends. All you have to do is watch the videos of my sister, review the more than 40 doctors' affidavits submitted to the court, fully read the autopsy report or simply believe the testimony of my family to understand that Terri was not only responsive, but that labeling her as having been in this dehumanizing, unscientific and lethal "vegetative" state was also erroneous.

Continuing her attack at erroneous information disseminated about her sister's case, Vitadamo gave examples of media bias:

Media Myth: This was a "right to die case" or end of life issue.

Truth: Terri wasn't dying and her life wasn't going to end. She would have lived a normal life span if her food and water wouldn't have been taken away.

Media Myth: Terri wanted to die, these were her wishes.

Truth: It is rarely reported that there was nothing in writing about Terri's wishes, and Judge Greer's decision to have her killed was based ONLY on the hearsay evidence of Michael Schiavo and his family members.

Media Myth: Terri was on artificial life support.

Truth: Terri was not on artificial life support in the terms that most people think of artificial life support - a ventilator or other machinery. The media never bothered to clarify that food and water is now classified as "ALS." Incidentally, throughout the entire history of mankind, never was it held that food and water constituted "artificial life support" until now.

Media Myth: Terri was brain dead or the new word, Terri's brain was "liquefied."

Truth: There was not one doctor that diagnosed Terri as brain dead.

Media Myth: This was a right to life debate and, as Michael Schiavo's attorney used to rant, that Terri's case was hijacked by the right to life organizations.

Truth: Again rarely, if ever, reported were the 25 local and national disability organizations supporting the life of my sister, which I believe was as many organizations or even more than the pro life organizations that were supporting my sister.

"Let's quickly take a look at the autopsy report. Here are some of the typical questions people have about the findings of the independent medical examiner.

Question: Did the autopsy prove that Terri was in persistent vegetative state?

Answer: No, it did not. However, it is continually and wrongly reported in the media that the autopsy proved that Terri was in PVS?