As Pontius Whittmore deliberates while an innocent handicapped person starves to death, Dr. William Hammesfahr, nominated for a nobel prize in Medicine and Physiology for his work in stroke and brain injury weighs in on Terri Schiavo.

“The important thing for people to understand is that she can eat and swallow right now,” said William Hammesfahr, a neurologist who has examined Schiavo.

Hammesfahr has examined Terri in the past…

“They are truly withholding food from a person who is awake, alert, and can eat and swallow,” Hammesfahr said. After spending at least 10 hours with Schiavo several years ago, he told Florida Judge George W. Greer that she can improve with therapy.

And there are physicians who corroborate his analysis…

Hammesfahr said there are at least 50 physicians he knows of, in private practice and related to medical universities who have said Schiavo is not in a PVS or in a coma.

And he describes the process of starvation…

“People who die of starvation, their acid eats through their stomach, they develop infections in their body, their body starts to dissolve from the inside out, they develop seizures, [and] frequently it breaks their back,” he said. “They have to have medications to essentially put them into a coma to not have their body break their back or something of that nature.”

Hopefully Judge Whittmore will consult with Dr. Hammesfahr before Terri reaches a point of no return.

UPDATE: Lots of others commenting on Dr. Hammesfahr’s observations.

Billy Goat
Sigmund, Carl and Alfred
AllThings2All
Civilization Calls
Discarded Lies

And many more…

UPDATE: Clearly there is an effort to ignore the evidence for Terri Schiavo’s condition and divert attention by attacking the person of Dr. Hammesfahr. However, as WorldNetDaily is reporting, yesterday, Mar. 23, Dr. William Cheshire from the Mayo Clinic branch in Jacksonville came to similar conclusions as Hammesfahr after examining Terri Schiavo… and note… after she had been deprived of food and water since Friday, Mar.18, 2005.

But there is additional evidence the pro death crowd chooses to ignore. Dr. William Campbell, who conducted the original bone scans of Terri Schiavo concluded she had suffered a trauma, not a heart problem. This was concurred with by Dr. Michael Baden, an esteemed New York pathologist who viewed the scans ten years later. The bone scans and the medical information surrounding Terri Schiavo had been supressed for nearly a decade. There are huge problems with this case. A full, independent inquiry, done by people who are not resident of this area of Florida or perhaps even the State, needs to be conducted. As I have stated several times, this is a very bad case for the right-to-die crowd to champion.

I wonder if it bothers anyone that Michael Schiavo’s attorney, George Felos is being sued by the U.S. Dept. of HHS to recover $14.8 million dollars paid to the hospice which runs Woodside Hospice where Terri is resident? Felos was chairman of the board at the time. The U.S. attorney is accusing fraud in the case.

And another item of interest…

Terri Schiavo was moved secretly by George Felos from Palm Gardens Convalescent Home in Largo to Woodside Hospice, which is operated by the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast of which Felos was chairman of the board. Terri was moved illegally, without doctor certification or a judicial order. People cannot be admitted to hospice without doctor certification that they are terminally ill and have six months or less to live. Dr. Gambone, Terri’s attending physician, indicated in his affidavit that Terri Schiavo was not in a persistant vegetative state, responded well to stimuli, and could function in a limited way. He indicated she did not need hospice care.

Additionally, the fact that Michael Schiavo’s lawyer, George Felos was chairman of the board of the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast which operates Woodside Hospice, was not revealed by Felos. This raises serious ethical issues. And I would postulate that Judge Greer was aware of this because his good friend, Sheriff Everett Rice, now a state legislator, was also on the board of the hospice. If Judge Greer was aware of this conflict of interest of George Felos, the judge had a legal and ethical duty to reveal it. It would also have been Sheriff Rice’s duty to investigate any claims of abuse which he apparently ignored. Would Rice’s relationship to Judge Greer and George Felos have anything to do with this? It would also have been the jurisdiction of district attorney Bernie McCabe, who was elected in 1992. McCabe has refused to get involved in the Schiavo case inspite of being requested to do so.

Like I’ve said, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, is it a dove?

Check out this story. It will amaze you.