Hey, if the Grinch's heart could grow three sizes in a day, who's to say that Terry's brain couldn't?

Seriously though, the autopsy should have no impact on anything. If that's what you look at, sooner or later someone's gonna have a plug pulled and later on we'll find out they could've maybe gotten better possibly perhaps, and then people will be up in arms. This isn't an issue to be proven post-mortem. It's about quality of life and ending someone's longtime suffering. What may be found out from an autopsy has no bearing on the life of someone dependant on machines or tubes for survival. In other words, it's not about could she have lived, it's about how she would have lived and whether she would want to.

To call a special session of Congress on this matter, to divert attention away from matters at hand--say for instance, the war in Iraq--only goes to show how misguided the GOP and it's leadership really is.
I certainly wouldn't want Dr Frist making any diagonsis on any of my family members.

your text seems to represent that Frist is not an "actual doctor", while also quoting someone else stating he was "a renowned heart surgeon". are heart surgeons NOT actual doctors?

by the way, you are comparing one doctor's (although not an ACTUAL doctor) opinion/diagnosis to medical evidence taken after death, which i don't find very useful.

and besides, there were plenty of people who had the opposite opinion. had the other opinions been proven wrong through medical analysis, then what?

Yes, Frist is a doctor - and apparently was a pretty good heart surgeon. What was so egregious about his "diagnosis" was that he came to his conclusions after watching 2 hours of video - supplied by her parents. Instead of actually taking the time to properly evaluate her and her condition, he basically just talked out of his ass.

Dr. Jon Thogmartin - the medical examiner - is very much a doctor. And the scores of doctors when her body was still "alive" all said the same thing: persistent vegetative state. The only people who said otherwise were crackpots and the good Dr. Frist - who I must remind people never actually examined her.

That is what the deal is. Frist might have been a doctor, and a good one. But once he laid down that telekinetic diagnosis as a naked ploy to curry favor with the Fundamentalist Conservatives who pushed this issue, he no longer acted as a doctor; he acted like the political hack he is.

Grubby had it right in his intro to this piece - this is a sad personal story. The best thing we as humans can do from here on is to take note of the serious issues that apply and then do whatever you personally deem appropriate in your life to respond, prepare and move on. If that means working up a living will - good; if it means not doing anything differently, that's fine as well.

We are all made wiser by the mistakes made by our fathers. It's sad, frustrating and unacceptable when many of those men and women don't seperate themselves from politics in making such mistakes.

I'll be the patent jerk here, as it is a role I'm oft inclined to play- but I'm more than pleased to thumb my nose at all the fanatics, friends and family that demanded she be kept "alive", and the fact that it takes someone's death to do that doesn't bother me all that much.

I don't excatly clutch desperately at the concept of life in the first place, but these people would have (and pretty much did) said anything to try to get her tube back in. "The husband beat her" "She said NO, I WANT TO LIVE", "She actually put together this WWII era 1/32 scale destroyer model when the cameras weren't around!"

I can possibly understand a parents desire not to see their child dead, but if my parents lied about my spouse or my life in order to keep my heart beating, the would get SUCH a haunting later.

As far as this autopsy goes, I feel it is vindication for the husband, the practice of medicine, and our judicial system. It was important for this to be known, even if it only convinced a few more people that science is good. The situation was so damn insane to begin with, hyped by the media to a frenzy, then contorted by political agenda- it needed to be shown that this body that was a person was little more than firing impulses, and a scant few at that.

As far as Frist goes...perhaps he's a fine doctor, but he's a terrible, coniving politician, and it should be obvious by his inattention to both medicine and politics in this situation that his view on ethics is quite off-kilter-- and that SHOULD be seen as VERY bad for BOTH of his professions.

So, in jerk-essence- I'm glad she really was totally brain damaged and blind, and that all the Jesus Freaks and asshole politicians are bummed by this TRUTH- I'm glad it was completely conclusive and is being reported, and I hope a lott of people get their due "I told you so's."

just for the record, all politicians are terrible and coniving. that is part of their effing job description. there is not one guy in washington who wouldn't do something stupid just to keep some lobbyists/loyalists happy. and both parties are guilty of that.

hey wait, should this have been poseted under the lynching thing? or for that matter any other post on this site?

now i'm the jerk here.

Hell yeah, There may be a rare few who might not qualify as "coniving" but for the most part... well, let's just say that in today's modern society, I find that I'm using the word "charlatan" more and more.

Look - there is a difference between pandering and downright lying and deceit. I'm sure that we can all agree that Frist has steadily moved away from innocent pandering and toward lying and deceit.

hey wait, should this have been posted under the lynching thing? or for that matter any other post on this site?

I'm not quite sure what you mean about that statement above, so I will assume you are calling this a pretty partisan website. FIne, I can live with that. I can also live with the fact that I'm right about the lynching vote - 100 Senators must be on the record against lynching. The only way that is possible now (without a roll-call vote) is by cosponsoring the resolution. Plain and simple.