Right Side of the Rainbow

Associated Press (via Yahoo News):

LARGO, Fla. - The autopsy released Wednesday on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding she was severely and irreversibly brain-damaged and blind as well. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused before she collapsed.

Yet medical examiners could not say for certain what caused her sudden 1990 collapse, long thought to have been brought on by an eating disorder.

The findings vindicated Michael Schiavo in his long and vitriolic battle with his in-laws, who insisted her condition was not hopeless and suggested that their daughter was the victim of violence by their son-in-law.

In its report, the medical examiner's office cast doubt on both the abuse and eating disorder theory.

The autopsy results on the 41-year-old woman were made public more than two months after Schiavo died of dehydration on March 31 following the removal of her feeding tube 13 days earlier. The death ended an extraordinary right-to-die battle that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House.

The blogosphere reacts:

Today's non-news dressed up as big news is that Terri Schiavo's autopsy uncovered no evidence of abuse by Michael Schiavo. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to offer much evidence of anything else, either. (damnum absque injuria)

The last fifteen years of Terri Schiavo's life were a tragedy. These results seem to confirm the view of the various guardians ad litem and judges who looked at the case that Michael Schiavo was not a monster eager to kill his wife and the judgment of all the medical experts not employed by the Schindlers. (Outside the Beltway)

The results of Terri Schiavo's autopsy are in, and it appears that the poor woman was in even a more frightful state than was assumed: she was blind, her brain was shrunk to half size by weight, and she could not have ingested sustenance without the infamous tube. What, then, does this change in hindsight on the pro-life case for keeping her alive? Precisely nothing. (Red State)

[C]ontrary to those who used this poor shell of a woman as a political football and fundraiser, Schiavo was not abused, was blind so could not possibly have seen a balloon or her loved ones, and had a brain half the normal weight that was massively and irreversibly damaged. ... Some people should really be ashamed of themselves. (Posted at Metafilter)

"She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli." -- Sen. Bill Frist, R-TN, majority leader, March 2005

The results of Terri Schiavo's autopsy are in, and they make one Senate Majority Leader look very foolish. According to Pinellas-Pasco, Florida medical examiner Jon Thogmartin, Schiavo's brain had suffered massive and irreversible damage; it "weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain." Thogmartin also refuted assertions from Shiavo's parents and some members of the GOP that Schiavo could have recovered: "This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons." But the kicker for those who tuned in to the footage of Schiavo seeming to follow the movement of helium balloons with her eyes is that the autopsy results show that "the vision centers of her brain were dead." In other words, Schiavo was blind. (Salon)

The autopsy done on Terri Schiavo has been released and to the surprise only of those who listened to the steady stream of nonsense coming from her family and amplified by the media, it confirmed exacly what Michael Schiavo, Judge Greer and the medical experts who examined her had said all along. (In the Agora)

This doesn't critically undermine many of the ethical arguments on either side of the issue, but it certainly kills much of the over-the-top hyperbole and inaccuracy surrounding her condition. (INDC Journal)

That is what is going to drive me certifiably insane (or, if you will, drive me into a Sullivanesque hysteria)- the fact that this is so clearly and objectively resolved. The pathological findings, when coupled with the clinical disagnosis, settle this matter beyond any reasonable doubt, and, as far as I am concerned and as Andrew noted, to a level of certainty that is very rare. But the wingnuts will still trudge on, smearing everyone who dares challenge their nonsense. (Balloon Juice)

The autopsy report is available in pdf format.

The report cannot, of course, resolve the debate about Mrs. Schiavo's views on a feeding tube or whether her husband was true to them. But it does confirm her husband's description of her clinical condition -- a condition in which few would want to have their bodies artificially sustained. And yet, many will still contend that Terri Schiavo did not express to her spouse a commonly held view that they themselves have expressed to their own spouses.