Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 03:17, 1 July 2005

NC Dave's 1200-word summary

So now I'm being a "bully" for wanting this article to be truthful? The fact is that the M.Schiavo supporters here have subjected me and other people who disagree with them (like Pat and Gordon) to a continual barrage of vicious personal attacks, which neither I nor any of the other Terri-supporters have never stooped to. So who's the "bully?"

My criticism is directed toward the faults of the article. This article is grossly inaccurate and severely POV-biased. For example, consider this excerpt from the opening section:

"three doctors selected by the courts ... diagnosed her to be in a persistent vegetative state."

That's just plain false. There were not three doctors selected by the courts. There was only one doctor, Dr. Peter Bambakidis, who was selected by Judge Greer after he had already ruled that Terri should die. The other two court-selected doctors apparently do not even exist. (Anyhow, three weeks have elapsed since I challenged the M.Schiavo supporters here to identify them, and nobody has done so.)

Here's a little bit more context:

"Eight doctors examined Schiavo. Six (her family physician, three doctors selected by the courts, and two selected by Michael) diagnosed her to be in a persistent vegetative state. Two guardians ad litem concurred with this decision. The two remaining doctors (both selected by Schiavo's parents) dissented, arguing that Schiavo was in a 'minimally conscious state.'"

Consider the numerous inaccuracies and examples of POV bias in just that little snippet:

• It invents two non-existent doctors "selected by the courts" who (supposedly) diagnosed her to be in a PVS. (I first pointed out this problem weeks ago, and nobody expressed disagreement with me, and nobody was able to identify the two mystery doctors... but the false statement remains in the article.)
• It ignores the disagreement between Judge Greer and his chosen doctor, Peter Bambakidis. Even Bambakidis did not rule out the possibility that Terri was conscious. He said only that a "preponderance of evidence" (the weakest evidentiary standard) supported PVS.
• It omits the Cheshire diagnosis, that Terri was probably in a MCS. Cheshire the doctor who examined Terri for the Florida Department of Children and Familes. He was arguably the only unbiased, independent physician to examine her, and he concluded that she was most likely conscious.
• It hides the fact that the so-called "family physician" (Victor Gambone) was actually part of the M.Schiavo/Felos-selected team working for Terri's demise. He was hand-picked by Michael Schiavo and his attorney, George Felos, shortly before they sued to have Terri's feeding tube removed. He was Terri's physician in name only, and never gave her meaningful treatment. He testified that, after an initial one-hour examination, he visited Terri three times per year, and that his visits lasted for approximately 10 minutes. NCdave 00:16, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• It omits mention of the numerous affidavits from other doctors who disagreed with the PVS diagnosis. The Schindlers were only allowed to have two doctors examine Terri, ever. Even that was allowed only because a higher court ordered it -- Greer didn't want them to have even that opportunity. Yet, the evidence of Terri's consciousness was so compelling that, nevertheless, dozens of doctors came forward and swore that in their professional opinions, based on the evidence available, the PVS diagnosis was flawed.
• It fails to mention that, as Dr./Sen. Frist put it, "PVS is difficult to diagnose. A 1996 British Medical Journal study ... concluded that there was a 43% error rate in the diagnosis of PVS. It takes a lot of time to conclude that a patient is in a PVS. Unfortunately, the doctors who made the diagnosis of PVS for Terri spent very little time with her. In contrast, the doctors who concluded she is not in PVS spent a lot of time with her.
• It omits the fact that the autopsy refuted the Cranford/Felos/M.Schiavo contention that she could not have been conscious because her cerebral cortex had been replaced by spinal fluid.
• It omits the fact that the autopsy report gave equal credence to the PVS and MCS hypotheses.
• It puts scare quotes around the MCS diagnosis.
• It includes non-expert GAL (lawyer) opinions in favor of the PVS diagnosis, which is circular, because those opinions were supposedly based on the doctors' opinions (though GAL Wolfson had proven a bias against Terri before his appointment as GAL, by expressing his opinion on local television that she should be allowed to die). Yet it...
• ...omits mention of the sworn testimony of numerous eyewitnesses, corroborated by video recordings of her behavior, that Terri was intermittently responsive to a variety of different stimuli, which is incompatible with a diagnosis of PVS.

The fact is that no doctor who examined Terri without being vetted by M.Schiavo/Felos expressed certainty that she was in a Persistent Vegetative State, and only one such doctor thought it even probable (presumably because he only saw her for 30 minutes; because he had been told, falsely, that she had no remaining cerebral cortex; and because he had no prior experience or special expertise treating or diagnosing PVS patients).

Those are the facts. But if you were to believe the opening section of the Misplaced Pages article on Terri Schiavo, you'd think there was no real doubt that Terri was in a Persistent Vegetative State. You'd think that the only doctors who doubted that PVS diagnosis were the two hired by the Schindlers, and that three unbiased doctors examined Terri and agreed with the PVS diagnosis and with the doctors selected by Michael Schaivo, and that no unbiased doctors at all agreed with the Schindlers.

That terribly deceptive wording exists because that is what the supporters of Michael Schiavo's position want the article to say. If anyone tries to fix it (as I have) they are instantly reverted and insulted. In fact, that is why I was "disciplined" (suspended) by user User:Neutrality, who is a strident supporter of M.Schiavo's POV. It was not for violating any Misplaced Pages rules, it was for trying to correct the inaccuracies in the article, or, in the alternative, flag the article as "neutrality disputed" or "accuracy disputed."

I have tried repeatedly to work with the M.Schiavo supporters here, but I just get insulted in return. For example, even though the article is both severely inaccurate and severely biased, and richly deserves the "neutrality disputed" and "accuracy disputed" warning tags, I offered, in a spirit of compromise, to accept either warning tag on the article, rather than both. In response, Duckecho wrote, yesterday:

"You surrendered any credibilty you might have had in lobbying for it when you earlier asserted that the article is also far from accurate yet you were willing to capitulate your integrity and compromise to solely the NPOV tag. Duckecho 19:54, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)"

That's apparently what ghost means by, "most of us have made efforts to work with him." The truth is that their idea of compromise is to respond to every attempt at restoring neutrality to the article with an instant revert and a fusillade of insults.  :-( NCdave 00:16, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)