Coda: “I kept my promise”
So Mike Schiavo gets the last word in his defense against the squad of hateful morons who’ve been smearing him lo these many months, on Terri’s headstone.
It says:
Departed this Earth February 25, 1990
At Peace March 31, 2005
[dove]
I kept my promise.
The lynch mob that spent the last three months smearing Mike are really hoppin’ mad over this inscription, insisting it proves what they’ve been saying about Mike all along, and some of Mike’s defenders aren’t pleased with it either, but many of the most hateful members of the mob haven’t commented yet.
It seems to me that this unusual inscription is a fitting end to an unusual life, and that it delivers a lesson to the Schindlers that they desperately need to learn: Actions have consequences; you can’t go around saying the nastiest things imaginable about somebody and expect him to pat you on the head and give you pie.
The Schindlers in fact need to learn this lesson, as they need to learn the lessons of the autopsy: Terri wasn’t talking to them from her hospital bed, she didn’t see them, and she wasn’t going to be rehabilitated no matter how hard they tried. When a person’s brain is gone there is no reason to keep their heart beating unless you intend to donate it to a needy patient. Hoping against hope has to end some time. Reality always triumphs over fantasy, and smearing the names of the living is no way to advance a “culture of life.”
The only thing that remains in this case is the apologies. Those who charged Mike Schiavo with putting Terri in the coma, those who insisted he pulled the plug for financial reasons, and those who insisted the he was to blame for the behavior of Jesse Jackson, Randall Terry, Nat Hentoff and the rest of the vultures owe him an apology. And when he gets that apology, he may be willing to change the inscription. But until he does, the inscription should stay as it is to remind us all of the shameful behavior of the deluded Schindlers and their lynch mob.
At the end of the day, the lesson here is that it’s not compassionate to allow delusional people to remain victim to their delusions. Love sometimes has to be firm, and that’s what Mike is doing for his former in-laws: helping them to face facts.
(PS: Welcome to all five vistors from ghoul Jeff (”Xrlq”) Bishop’s blog. He’s a real piece of work, isn’t he?)
Update: Dean’s getting all religious again.
- June 21st
[...] man deserves credit where credit’s due. While other Schiavo apologists say nothing, defend the indefensible, or even twist the story around to make the Schindlers into t [...]
Only an addlepated fool would have expected anything less from a lying adulterer.
Amusing how “not being a cruel and vicious asshole to my wife’s family” is now portrayed as “getting religious.”
I’m ashamed to say I know you.
The Schindlers have misbehaved and they need to be punished. Pretending they haven’t is a lot like being religious and pretending the Easter Bunny made us all.
For a guy in networking, I would expect a little more curiousity as to the capabilities of a brain that was by all accounts still much larger than that of other humans which we treat as real people (children).
The mind can rewire itself–this is what learning is all about. The fact remains, we do not know what Terri was thinking. Based on this uncertainty, it was a crime against humanity to starve her to death.
Dead neurons don’t re-wire themselves, they rot.
There comes a time in the life of every public fixation when we all have to stop pretending and face facts.
Living neurons do and there were plenty of living neurons left over after the killoff of much of the rest of the brain. (This is why I noted that there were enough remaining neurons so that the size of the brain was greater than that of many children–I was not counting dead neurons).
Note that the brain also seems to prioritize which neurons get killed off first.
Any good network works similarly. This is why we distribute computing and signaling over a network–the reason for the design of the internet itself. The net is not only robust, it is self-healing (any guy working in QoS should be familiar with the concept).
Any guy working in QoS knows that there are some conditions that are too hostile to support high-bandwidth streams, no matter how many tricks you play. You can’t stream HDTV over 802.11b, for example.
Terri’s brain was too far gone for re-wiring. The half that was gone included many key centers, and they don’t grow back. Without cognition, we’re pretty well screwed, and that was her situation.
“Too far gone”?
How do you know? Does any point exist at which the brain cannot rewire itself?
What was the capabilities of the brain?
What allows a brain to adapt? How was that capacity absent in Terri? How do your know? How could you know?
No one knows. It is a mistake to assume certainty where you cannot even prove the limits of your uncertainty.
I know this because I work with the network QoS problem. You see, if you have a network consisting of one switch, several computers, and two routers, and you lose the switch you’re screwed. The computers and the routers can’t “wire around it.”
Similarly, if you lose your visual cortex you can’t see, period. The brain is composed of specialized centers, it’s not just a democratic collection of neurons that can do any damn thing they want.
But apparently you can’t translate that knowledge to the brain.
Switched networks are very simple. Nonetheless, we have many PhDs each year doing new work on just this topic. Each attempts to construct a mathematical model (empirical mostly) to approximate their capabilities. This is nothing compared to the brain. Even the best train neurologists are constantly surprised by one case or the other.
You may be interested in some of these case studies.
Richard, you don’t know and we know that you don’t know. You simply have a want to believe.
BTW, as you note it appears that Terri was blind. This fact should cause you some reflection. Obviously, she was not able to react to her environment as some thought she ought to be able. So her cogitive response capabilities were likely underestimated. Note that blindness alone does not make a person a nonperson. In fact, blindness has nothing to do with personhood. (I thought you were a Democrat?)