It’s unfortunate that the medical examiner, Dr. Jon Thogmartin, who is doing the autopsy of Terri Schiavo, won’t allow independent examiners to be present during the autopsy. Not doing so potentially renders the autopsy worthless.

It is also clear from the mission statement of the Medical Examiner’s Office that the autopsy only needs to deal with the cause of death. Any additional considerations will only be done at the request of the District Attorney who just happens to be Bernie McCabe. McCabe has repeatedly refused to even consider any evidence presented to him indicating physical abuse of Terri Schiavo. Why should this be any different?

It is interesting to note also that Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the senior medical correspondent for CNN of all places, made a concerted effort to emphasize on television appearances March 29 and March 30, 2005 that an autopsy of the brain will not be a reliable determining factor on the state of Terri Schiavo. “No definitive state can be determined with an autopsy,” said Gupta, who continued to emphasize that he had seen brain scans similar to Terri’s where the people were very functional. Conversely he had seen scans that looked almost normal and the people could not function at all.

Then consider the case of Dr. Stephen Scher. He was a prominent physician in a small town in Pennsylvania. During a hunting outing one day with his lawyer friend, Martin Dillon, Dillon was killed. Scher maintained Dillon tripped and Dillon’s rifle accidentally went off and killed him. As it turned out Scher was having an affair with Dillon’s wife and shortly after this “accident” they were married. The medical examiner sided with Scher, wrote a report stating that the wounds indicated Dillon died from accidental injury and that got Scher off the hook. Few people were buying it. Twenty years later, after the death of the examiner, the court was petitioned to reopen the case and conduct another autopsy with the exhumed body. This time medical experts were given access to the autopsy and subsequently determined Dillon could not have been killed with his own gun. The findings convicted Scher of murder.

It is cases like this that may prompt Michael Schiavo to cremate the body of Terri Schiavo. That will destroy all evidence (except of course for the bone scans… hopefully someone outside the pro death, Michael Schiavo camp is keeping copies of these. Otherwise I fear they will disappear as well.).

Of course Michael has so lovingly told us that Terri didn’t like bugs. I guess she liked fire better.