This post begins with this article:

Amid emotion is heard science's voice

By CHASE SQUIRES, Times TV columnist
Published June 16, 2005

Only the most intensely and emotionally involved would have watched all of Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin's news conference as he painstakingly detailed the autopsy of Terry Schiavo.

But for more than an hour Wednesday, it seemed that was exactly whom he was talking to. The shy, behind-the-scenes man of science stared patiently into a bank of television cameras from behind a wall of microphones. He was blunt, but gentle. Understanding, but clear.

His words, and the way he delivered them, stood in stark contrast to the insistent, even shrill voices heard during Schiavo's last days. Where Schiavo's advocates on both sides had appealed to emotion, Thogmartin called for reason. Where they cried and prayed, he explained.

Please, his words implored, listen. There are things that science can reveal and things that are unknowable. There is nothing left to uncover, no tissue left to dissect, nothing more to fight over.

There were allegations of abuse and claims that Schiavo might someday have recovered. Theories that she could follow a balloon with her eyes, and heartfelt offers to feed her by hand after her feeding tube was removed, if only the law had allowed.

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In his pursuit of federal legislation to "save" Terri Schiavo, Senator Bill Frist used his medical credentials to make his public diagnosis that Ms. Schiavo was conscious and aware. He based his medical conclusions upon that video tape of Ms. Schiavo supposedly showing her eyes tracking a balloon. Of course, the problem here is that Terri Schiavo was blind and physically incapapable of sight.

There is perhaps no better example of Republicans concocting fantasies to pander to the religious right than this. Bill Frist invoked his medical credentials to the American people in making his case for Congress to interfere into the heart of a personal, private family tragedy. While the Republican administration took us to war on the basis of concocted fantasies about non-existent WMDs, so too do Republicans in Congress concoct fantasies to stick their busy-body noses into the private and personal affairs of American citizens. Watch your back America. Republicans will do and say anything to advance what they believe to be their own political gain at the expense of truth, science and reality.