 Bob and Mary Schindler (NRLC.org) |
Responding to reports of a drug that can temporarily revive people diagnosed in a permanent vegetative state, the foundation run by the family of Terri Schiavo is calling for a moratorium on removal of care for people in such a condition.
The Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation points out South African researchers claim Zolpidem, used to treat insomnia, appears to be effective in restoring some brain function to patients previously determined to be in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS.
The researchers examined the effects on three patients of using the drug for up to six years and found all “were aroused transiently every morning after Zolpidem.”
The Schindlers say they pleaded for years with the courts and with Terri’s husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo, to try treatments or medicines that could help improve their daughter’s condition but were denied.
The family says their St. Petersburg, Fla., foundation has been contacted by dozens of families with similar stories of patients improving significantly after being wrongly diagnosed as being in PVS.
One patient, Patricia White Bull, awoke in December 2000 after being in a PVS for 16 years. She had been given the drug Amantadine, used to stimulate people with Parkinson’s disease and brain damage
“Sadly, we will never know if any of any of these drugs or treatments that were available would have improved Terri’s condition,” the family said.
The Schindlers point out a report released by the British Medical Journal in 1996 found 43 percent of the diagnosed cases of PVS studied were misdiagnosed.
“We at the foundation are seeing that the PVS diagnosis is being commonly misdiagnosed,” said Terri’s father, Robert Schindler. “Consequently, it has become very obvious we don’t know enough about this so-called diagnosis, and common sense dictates that the removal of food and water based on this misclassification must end until further studies can be conducted.”
Schindler and his wife, Mary, work with daughter Suzanne Schindler Vitadamo and son Bobby Schindler, who is running the Terri Schindler Schiavo Center for Health Care Ethics in Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, Michael Schiavo has formed a political action committee called Terri PAC, which says it aims to “restore personal freedoms and individual rights.”
Schiavo says on the website, “Politicians in Washington, D.C., and Florida abused their public trust by forcing the government in the middle of my family tragedy.”
Be sure to get your copy of “Terri’s Story: The Court-Ordered Death of an American Woman.”
For background on the 15-year saga, read “The whole Terri Schiavo story.”
WorldNetDaily has been reporting on the Terri Schiavo story since 2002 – far longer than most other national news organization – and exposing the many troubling, scandalous, and possibly criminal, aspects of the case that to this day rarely surface in news reports. Read WorldNetDaily’s unparalleled, in-depth coverage of the life-and-death fight over Terri Schiavo, including over 150 original stories and columns.
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