Terri's husband center stage
at right-to-die conference

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.

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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."

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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.