MADER'S 'BRANTS Terri Shiavo June 25, 2005 - The autopsy report is finally out on Terri Schiavo. Compared to Michael Jackson it was just a blip on the news this week. But I think it was important none the less. If for no other reason than it finally put to rest the issue of her being brain dead or not. Let's go to the map. Anyone with even a basic understanding of human physiology from high school can see that anything that made Terri who she was is gone. In simple terms: The penthouse apartment was vacant. The door bell is ringing and nobody is home. The shoe box is missing its shoes. Es muy empty en la cabasa Pepito. Cha! Cha! Cha! The car has blown its engine. The elevator don't go all the way up. It's not a full deck of cards. An important thing to note here is that the CT scan was taken more than three years ago back in 2002. It's also important to note that the kind of damage you see in the image didn't just happen three years ago but within a relatively short time of her collapse. Terri Schiavo was dead back in 1990-91. Her body, much like her parents and a strangely vocal group of nuts, didn't know any better. Medical records are protected by a right to privacy. However, if someone had just bothered to make this image public years ago a lot of the silliness that occurred surrounding her death could have been avoided. Then again why should they have been available to complete strangers that had no business interfering with the choices made by a spouse for their loved one? Her parents, to some degree, I can forgive. They loved their daughter even if their behavior was irrational and, ultimately, in the end cruel. At least you can understand how a parent might react. Everyone else doesn't get off so easy. From the fundamentalist whack jobs that would declare every used Kleenex or piece of dead skin sloughed off during the course of an average day "sacred"- to the political opportunists who knew nothing about Terri or her condition yet beat their fists on podiums in Congress declaring the sanctity of life (all the while checking their ratings in the polls) - to the camera whores that used one married couples suffering to grab air time on the news while standing in front of the slacked jawed sheep blindly following their media hogging demigods. Shame on you! Shame one you for making a man suffer and turning what had to already be a hard decision into something monstrous. Shame on you for vilifying a man who was simply following through on the wishes of his own wife. Shame on you for impeding a husband exercising a right that most people take for granted as a spouse. Shame on you for denying Terri the same fundamental mercy and courtesy you would show an injured dog. And last but not least, shame on you for slinking away like vermin in the night and not having the fundamental sense of honor to apologize for the havoc you had wrought once it was over. You are vile. There should be a law forcing activists to take fiscal responsibility for the messes they cause. It's too easy for the Jesse Jackson's of the world to just float into a situation, disrupt someone's life, then leave with no accountability for the damage they have wrought to the lives of the people involved. This isn't an infringement of the first amendment. It makes people take responsibility for interfering with other people's private lives. Now you are thinking that I have no vitriol for the other side of this issue. Not true. Once the decision had been made to let Terri die what sick sadistic bastard decided to starve her to death? How can any society that is supposedly compassionate and caring find it appropriate to slowly kill someone over the period of fifteen days? The doctors would hide behind the Hippocratic Oath claiming that letting nature run its course is somehow more merciful than a simple injection that could have ended the whole tragedy in a matter of minutes. They would also claim that the law prohibits any form of intervention on their part. Is it just me or is it odd that we will show more human decency to farm animals and convicted murders on death row? Charles Manson you kill over a period of fifteen days, not some poor woman that by all accounts had never hurt anyone. It may be the law but it sucks. So what's the point? A lot of people spend too much time fiddling in issues that do not concern them. A lot of people in the belief they are being kind actually cause more suffering. And a lot of people allow themselves to be blind to things that are obvious. On a last note. I do enjoy the irony of how the fundamentalists that are such rapid supporters of marriage, are some of the same people helping destroy some of its fundamental tenants. Later, Mader