Sunday, June 26, 2005
Hooey Arrives.
As we predicted, the hooey has commenced. Dr. Sherry Eros has posted a comment below ("Make Way For Hooey") which purports to refute the Schiavo autopsy. We felt we'd deal with it here rather than in a comment.
A quick google search of her name will tell discerning readers all they need to know about Dr. Eros and her agenda (though not if that's her real name or if she knows Gene Simmons). On her website, for instance, one will find a link to her condemnation of the media's "lurid, exaggerated, inflammatory and prejudicial" reporting of Rush Limbaugh's legal and drug problems.
As you may suspect, nothing in the "refutation" of the Schiavo autopsy is based on evidence. Dr. Eros did not examine Terri Schiavo and did not participate in the autopsy. Her opinion has all the authority of that of a certain Dr. Frist, who, unlike Dr. Eros, has a great deal to lose by continuing to defend his long-distance "diagnosis" in the wake of the autopsy report.
What we're dealing with is a variation on the "expert witness" technique used by doctors in courtrooms when they are being asked to support or refute a piece of medical evidence in opposition to observable reality. It consists of trying to undermine an evidenced position by talking about a whole lot of other stuff while downplaying the tenuous connection that stuff has to the matter at hand.
Speaking of which, the staff attorney here at 201k finds it funny that doctors--who will never second-guess each other at a malpractice trial--have no qualms about doing so on talk-shows, blogs, and "conservative websites" where the burden of evidence is, to say the least, less than that required by a court of law.
Being a trial attorney she is naturally predisposed to disdain these types of doctors, but her point is still a good one.
Consider, for instance, the doctors who testified on behalf of the Schindlers, and contrast the reckless bloviating they felt free to unleash on cable TV with the assertions they made in court (under oath), and you'll understand what we're talking about.
Or, in the instant matter, consider statements like the one from Dr. Eros that "the 'cortical blindness' claimed by the ME was almost certainly an artifact of the dehydration..." [emphasis added] which, coming from someone who neither examined Terri Schiavo nor witnessed her autopsy is, to put it nicely, a degree of certainty more suited to right-wing websites than medical testimony.
If you're really in the mood for some of Dr. Eros' analysis treat yourself to her semantic discussion of the phrase "consistent with", as in, "consistent with a permanent vegetative state" (which is what the Medical Examiners found Terri Schiavo's brain condition to be). Not surprisingly, Dr. Eros feels that the very phrase itself is meaningless--which is a happy coincidence for her, given that if it isn't meaningless it would indicate that Terri Schiavo's brain condition was consistent with a permanent vegetative state.
You get the idea.
It's always a fun ride when ideologues start dissecting the meaning of words and phrases. Perhaps she and Dr. Egnor can have a "semantic-off". Let's hope they do it under the "cone of silence".
In any event, we'll cut to the quick on this: we're happy to entertain any comments from Dr. Egnor because we posted an entry on his letter to the Times. In fact we're looking forward to what he could possibly have to say in the wake of that embarrassing letter.
But we're not going to waste our time nor the time of our readers on agenda-driven "refutations" of the Schiavo autopsy, nor will we provide space for ideological horseshit masquerading as medicine. Dr. Eros' comment--which she also emailed to us--can stay, but any further use of this site by self-promoting right-wing zealots will be treated like mail from a Florida time-share.
A quick google search of her name will tell discerning readers all they need to know about Dr. Eros and her agenda (though not if that's her real name or if she knows Gene Simmons). On her website, for instance, one will find a link to her condemnation of the media's "lurid, exaggerated, inflammatory and prejudicial" reporting of Rush Limbaugh's legal and drug problems.
As you may suspect, nothing in the "refutation" of the Schiavo autopsy is based on evidence. Dr. Eros did not examine Terri Schiavo and did not participate in the autopsy. Her opinion has all the authority of that of a certain Dr. Frist, who, unlike Dr. Eros, has a great deal to lose by continuing to defend his long-distance "diagnosis" in the wake of the autopsy report.
What we're dealing with is a variation on the "expert witness" technique used by doctors in courtrooms when they are being asked to support or refute a piece of medical evidence in opposition to observable reality. It consists of trying to undermine an evidenced position by talking about a whole lot of other stuff while downplaying the tenuous connection that stuff has to the matter at hand.
Speaking of which, the staff attorney here at 201k finds it funny that doctors--who will never second-guess each other at a malpractice trial--have no qualms about doing so on talk-shows, blogs, and "conservative websites" where the burden of evidence is, to say the least, less than that required by a court of law.
Being a trial attorney she is naturally predisposed to disdain these types of doctors, but her point is still a good one.
Consider, for instance, the doctors who testified on behalf of the Schindlers, and contrast the reckless bloviating they felt free to unleash on cable TV with the assertions they made in court (under oath), and you'll understand what we're talking about.
Or, in the instant matter, consider statements like the one from Dr. Eros that "the 'cortical blindness' claimed by the ME was almost certainly an artifact of the dehydration..." [emphasis added] which, coming from someone who neither examined Terri Schiavo nor witnessed her autopsy is, to put it nicely, a degree of certainty more suited to right-wing websites than medical testimony.
If you're really in the mood for some of Dr. Eros' analysis treat yourself to her semantic discussion of the phrase "consistent with", as in, "consistent with a permanent vegetative state" (which is what the Medical Examiners found Terri Schiavo's brain condition to be). Not surprisingly, Dr. Eros feels that the very phrase itself is meaningless--which is a happy coincidence for her, given that if it isn't meaningless it would indicate that Terri Schiavo's brain condition was consistent with a permanent vegetative state.
You get the idea.
It's always a fun ride when ideologues start dissecting the meaning of words and phrases. Perhaps she and Dr. Egnor can have a "semantic-off". Let's hope they do it under the "cone of silence".
In any event, we'll cut to the quick on this: we're happy to entertain any comments from Dr. Egnor because we posted an entry on his letter to the Times. In fact we're looking forward to what he could possibly have to say in the wake of that embarrassing letter.
But we're not going to waste our time nor the time of our readers on agenda-driven "refutations" of the Schiavo autopsy, nor will we provide space for ideological horseshit masquerading as medicine. Dr. Eros' comment--which she also emailed to us--can stay, but any further use of this site by self-promoting right-wing zealots will be treated like mail from a Florida time-share.
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I doubt that Sherry Eros is her real name. I haven't been able to find out where she works (as a neuropsychiatrist, supposedly), or even if she is an actual neuropsychiatrist.
I do not believe the person who wrote that drivel is a doctor, or even capable of higher level reasoning. Blindness, an atrophied brain and Terri Schiavo's other ailments caused by dehydration? Please. People like 'Eros' rely on other folks being even less capable of thinking than they are.
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