What caused Terri Schiavo’s brain damage remains a mystery, but medical authorities said Wednesday that the injury was “massive” and irreversible, and left her blind.
An autopsy on Schiavo, who became the focus of a nationwide debate about life and death, found that her brain had atrophied to less than half the normal size, medical examiner Jon Thogmartin said during a news conference in Largo, Fla.
“There was massive neuronal loss,” said Thogmartin, chief medical examiner for two counties, referring to brain cells. “This damage was irreversible.”
He added that “no amount of treatment” could have repaired the damage. He concluded that she was blind, a key finding because some believed she could follow objects with her eyes.
The report also found no evidence of ill treatment, either before or after her brain was damaged.
Schiavo, 41, died March 31, almost two weeks after the feeding tube keeping her alive was removed. She collapsed in 1990 and, for the following 15 years, was in what doctors testified was a “persistent vegetative state.”
She was the subject of a very public, seven-year legal fight over her diagnosis and desires that pitted the Schindler family – her parents and siblings – against her husband, Michael Schiavo. He wanted to remove the feeding tube, arguing that she would not want to live after such serious brain damage.
Her family contended that she was responsive and could get better. As a Catholic, they said, she would have chosen to live, no matter what.
Ultimately, their battle drew in about 40 judges in six courts, the president, Congress and many religious groups. President Bush signed a bill, rushed through by Congress in March, in a last-ditch effort to restore her feeding tube.
Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush was told about the autopsy report and remains “deeply saddened by this case,” adding, “The president took the position he did for a reason. The president believes we should stand on the side of defending and protecting life. That’s why he stood with all those who supported efforts to defend her life. This is a sad case. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with her family and friends.”
At the Florida news conference, Thogmartin emphasized that persistent vegetative state is a “clinical” diagnosis made only by doctors who examine a living patient.
But Stephen J. Nelson, chief medical examiner for the 10th Judicial Circuit of Florida, who helped perform the autopsy, said its findings are “very consistent with persistent vegetative state.”
He said Schiavo’s brain weighed 615 grams, 220 grams less than that of Karen Ann Quinlan, the subject of another famous right-to-die debate. Quinlan died after 10 years in a persistent vegetative state, his report said.
Michael Schiavo’s attorney, George Felos, said Terri’s husband was “pleased to hear the hard science and evidence” that corroborated what he has been saying for years – that Terri could not be fed by mouth, that no rehabilitation or therapy could improve her condition and that she had not been abused.
Felos also noted the finding that Terri was blind, considering the “deep impact on the public” of video footage in which Terri appeared to respond to her mother and follow the movement of a balloon with her eyes.
“We have been saying for years and years and years … that Terri’s eye movement and apparent response to visual stimuli was a reflexive action.
“It’s a hard fact, a scientific fact, that Terri Schiavo was blind. She couldn’t see her mother,” Felos said.
He also said that Michael Schiavo had decided to release to the public some of the autopsy photos, although he did not know when. He has not yet decided what to do with his wife’s ashes.
Barbara Weller, an attorney who represented the Schindlers, said the family still disputed the diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state. “They know what they experienced when they were with Terri.”
The central moral question, she said, remains. “Is it really moral for us to kill people because their quality of life is not what a judge thinks it should be? We still have to ask in America whether we really want people killed in that way,” she said.
Terri’s family, Weller said, “didn’t care what her physical condition was. They would have loved her and cared for her no matter.”
The cause of Terri Schiavo’s collapse has never been proved, but testimony in a 1992 civil trial indicated she probably was suffering from an eating disorder that led to a chemical imbalance and heart attack.
Thogmartin said he did not find enough evidence to prove she suffered from bulimia. He said he was unable to establish exactly what had caused her brain to get too little oxygen and blood in 1990.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
