Provocative columnist

It’s Ellen Goodman again (see post below), and this time she’s taking on the biomedical community that seeks to understand how to care for the profoundly disabled. The article is crassly titled “Playing vegetative mind games,” and it’s about the brain-injured woman who showed signs of awareness on a brain imaging test, startling British doctors and prompting hopeful reactions.

The exuberant lead researcher, Adrian Owen, said the results “confirmed beyond any doubt that she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings.” A colleague even raised the possibility that some vegetative patients have “a rich and complex internal life.”

Sounds hopeful, right? Goodman scoffed. More like sneered. In fact, she ridiculed and offended the family of Terri Schiavo, while she was at it.

Terri’s brother Bobby has responded in his untiring effort to clarify the record, defend the disabled and inform the public, especially the sometimes crass media. His letter has the eloquence, grace and dignity characteristic of the Schindler family. And the force of the truth. Here’s the whole thing:

Ms. Goodman:

I read your recent column, “Playing vegetative mind games”.

The lengths that you and many of your colleagues continue to go to in order to somehow justify the barbaric killing of my sister, Terri, are truly sad and in my opinion a tragic reflection of how you and those that think like you have truly misplaced your humanity.

What is so profoundly frightening about what you wrote is the effort to use this scientifically inaccurate persistent vegetative state (PVS) label to indiscriminately decide when it’s permissible to kill those that are disabled. As you pointed out in your column, there are tens of thousands of people that have experienced a brain injury. The idea that certain lives have somehow lost their meaning because they exist in this so-called PVS, which according to you, is some type of “horrifying” state of consciousnesses or lack thereof (not quite sure how you or anyone would have knowledge of this) is equally alarming. It is this form of lethal bigotry that my family battled in our efforts to get help for my sister. 

Recently, a British research study concluded that the PVS diagnosis is in fact misdiagnosed more than 40% of the time. Recognizing this finding along with this most recent discovery, and others similar to it, one with any common sense would have to agree that using the completely subjective PVS “diagnosis” as the basis to kill the disabled is clearly outrageous.

Incidentally, I find it remarkable how the voice of disabled community has been all but ignored by most of the popular media. Why are the persons that are truly in harm’s way, the disabled, rarely mentioned? There were thirty (30) local and national disability organizations that publicly spoke out on behalf of Terri, yet their voices have been silenced.

It seems to me that in spite of your opinion (and many in the mainstream media for that matter) the general public is just not agreeing with what you and so many morally misguided individuals are promoting. Fortunately, good people know the fundamental difference between right and wrong, and have compassion for those that are most vulnerable. Regardless of these dehumanizing labels, they realize that preying on the brain injured is not a way of showing kindness, nor is it some form of altruism, but rather a selfish and cowardly act by those who justify in their minds that the killing of the weak and voiceless is somehow “okay”.

It comes down to this Ms. Goodman, and it’s really very simple – it’s not up to you or anyone to decide.

Perhaps if you ever had the opportunity to care for someone like Terri you would understand why your article is so offensive not only to her memory and my family, but also to the tens of thousands of brain injured persons that you claim to speak for.
Bobby Schindler

Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation

You can find Bobby, and the work his family is doing, here.