Dr. Ronald Cranford

After avoiding the public eye for months prior to and following the court-ordered dehydration death of his brain-injured wife Terri, Michael Schiavo is taking center stage at a medical-ethics conference today in Minneapolis honoring neurologist and bioethicist Dr. Ronald Cranford.

Meanwhile, right-to-life demonstrators will offer their own form of tribute in a protest outside the gathering.

The national conference will celebrate the landmark right-to-die cases in which Cranford served as an expert witness in favor of death over the past 30 years, including that of Terri Schiavo.

The prominent right-to-die activist estimates he's testified 100 times in favor of removing feeding tubes from patients. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports the conference is subtitled: "Ron Cranford's stories of heroes and courage."

"He's a great man," the paper reported Michael Schiavo as saying of Cranford, who served as Schiavo's medical adviser and public surrogate in media interviews.

Schiavo told the Tribune he's making the rare public appearance because Cranford is "a very close family friend" who helped him during his seven-year court battle against the Schindlers, Terri's parents and siblings, to remove her feeding tube.

After the high-profile legal tug-of-war provoked the unprecedented intervention of the Florida legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress and President Bush, a federal district court judge cleared the way for Pinellas-Pasco County Circuit Court Judge George Greer's 2000 order to be carried out. Accordingly, the feeding tube was removed and Terri Schiavo died March 31, following 13 days of dehydration and starvation.

Cranford examined Terri Schiavo for 42 minutes in October 2002 and testified along with two other neurologists that she was in a permanent vegetative state, one of the criteria necessary under Florida law to remove a feeding tube from an incapacitated patient who has no living will indicating his or her wishes under the circumstances. Cranford reportedly received death threats for his advocacy on behalf of Michael Schiavo.

"I've seen her," he told CNN. "There's no doubt in my mind, whatsoever, she's in a permanent vegetative state. Her CAT scan shows extremely severe atrophy to the brain. And her EEG is flat. It doesn't show any electrical activity at all."

As WorldNetDaily reported, Cranford's diagnosis was disputed by dozens of medical experts including neurologist Dr. William Hammesfahr, who said, "I spent about 10 hours across about three months and the woman is very aware of her surroundings. She's very aware. She's alert. She's not in a coma. She's not in PVS."

Hammesfahr added, "With proper therapy, she will have a tremendous improvement. I think, personally, that she'll be able to walk, eventually, and she will be able to use at least one of her arms."

"There's no way," responded Cranford. "That's totally bogus."

The debate over the true nature of Terri Schiavo's medical condition persists six months after her death. Medical examiners declared the post-mortem findings during her autopsy "consistent with" a diagnosis of PVS, but emphasized that the diagnosis was a clinical one to be made on live patients.

Still, most news outlets, including the Tribune, erroneously reported the autopsy "confirmed" the PVS diagnosis. None reported the medical examiners conceded during a June 15 press conference they could not rule out the diagnosis of MCS, or minimally conscious state.

In addition to a 34-year career at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis from which he announced his retirement in May, Cranford serves on the board of directors of the Choice in Dying Society, which promotes doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia.

WND also reported he was a featured speaker at the 1992 national conference of the Hemlock Society. The group recently changed its name to End of Life Choices.

In 1997, Cranford wrote an opinion piece in the Tribune titled: "When a feeding tube borders on barbaric."

"Just a few decades ago cases of brain death, vegetative state and locked-in syndrome were rare," he wrote. "These days, medicine's 'therapeutic triumphs' have made these neurologic conditions rather frequent. For all its power to restore life and health, we now realize, modern medicine also has great potential for prolonging a dehumanizing existence for the patient."

He suggested the antidote for patients suffering Alzheimer's disease was the same as for those in vegetative states -- physician-assisted suicide.

"Dr. Cranford has been a pivotal figure in medical ethics since the '70s," Dr. Ray Gensinger Jr., deputy medical director at Hennepin County Medical Center told the paper. "He's willing to be the scapegoat."

Not just Cranford fans will be turning out for today's conference at the Hyatt Regency, but foes as well. Right-to-life protesters have organized a morning rally.

"Ron Cranford is trying to make heroes out of people who have done some really evil things," longtime opponent Brian Gibson, executive director of the Pro-Life Action Ministries in St. Paul, told the paper.

"The whole conference needs to be opposed. It's a morbid and sadistic thing they're promoting."

"We believe what happened to her was immoral," added Brother Paul O'Donnell of St. Paul, who served as a spiritual adviser to the Schindlers. "It's morally unacceptable to deliberately withhold food and water to cause [her] death."

WorldNetDaily has been reporting on the Terri Schiavo story since 2002 - far longer than most other national news organizations - and exposing the many troubling, scandalous, and possibly criminal, aspects of the case that rarely surfaced in news reports. Coming soon ... the definitive book on the Terri Schiavo saga, titled "Terri's Story: The Court-Ordered Death of an American Woman." Author Diana Lynne provides a powerful, insightful, and ultimately heartbreaking story. This eye-opening book provides the background and depth missing in most of the national news coverage of the pitched battle over the life of Terri Schiavo.

Read WorldNetDaily's unparalleled, in-depth coverage of the life-and-death fight over Terri Schiavo, including over 150 original stories and columns.