Monday, June 20, 2005 | 9:09 a.m.
In March the Republican leaders in Congress who wanted to prevent Terri Schiavo's feeding tube from being removed said that her physical condition was much better than the public had been led to believe. They dismissed previous court decisions, even though they were based on medical evidence, that had found Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state without any hope of recovery.
"Ms. Schiavo's condition, I believe, has been at times misrepresented by the media," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said at the time. "Terri Schiavo is not brain dead; she talks and she laughs, and she expresses happiness and discomfort. Terri Schiavo is not on life support." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a heart surgeon, didn't seem to have any doubts either. He questioned the diagnoses made by other doctors that Schiavo's eye movements and smiles were simply automatic responses and not proof of consciousness. "I question it based on a review of the video footage," Frist said on the Senate floor. "And that footage, to me, depicted something very different than (a) persistent vegetative state." He added, according to the Associated Press, that "she certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli."
Ultimately, the previous court decisions were upheld and, at her husband's request, her feeding tube was removed, resulting in her death on March 31. Last week, three months after Congress' intervention in the Schiavo case, an autopsy report on Schiavo was issued that thoroughly refutes the arguments made by DeLay and Frist and shows that it was they who were misleading the public all along. The autopsy concluded that Schiavo had suffered severe, irreversible brain damage. Indeed, her brain was half the normal size and, with respect to Schiavo responding to "visual stimuli" as Frist had asserted, the doctors who performed the autopsy found that she was blind.
A spokesman for DeLay declined to talk about the autopsy after it was released on Wednesday, but Frist did respond. Frist said that while he accepted the results of the autopsy, he didn't have any misgivings about his previous questioning of Schiavo's diagnosis that had been made by other doctors. In fact, Frist claimed that he never made a formal diagnosis. Despite Frist's denials, that simply isn't what happened.
The truth is that Frist, citing his authority as a doctor, made it clear during debate in the Senate that his diagnosis was that Schiavo wasn't in a persistent vegetative state. And Frist certainly knew that other members of Congress would look to him for advice in deciding whether the legislative branch should intervene in this matter in the courts. Frist wasn't acting as a physician. Rather, he was acting as a politician, pandering to the religious right, which could be pivotal for his political future since he is considering a run for president in 2008. Not only has this episode made us wonder just how good a doctor Frist is, but it also shows that he is a pretty poor politician in light of the public backlash that developed over Congress' meddling in a private family matter.
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