Video-Tape Medicine

One Senator and several Representatives who once practiced medicine have arrogantly asserted -- based on their viewing of videotapes and anecdotal discussions with family and an unnamed neurologist -- that Terri Schiavo is not in a "vegetative state" ... that she has "some cognitive ability" ... and that she "responds to the people around her." This direct rebutal of the facts of the case as judged by Florida Courts comes from men who have never laid eyes on Schiavo. Contrast their view with that Jay Wolfson, the Florida lawyer and doctor who investigated the case for Governor Jeb Bush in 2003. He reviewed 13 years of court documents and spent hours with both Terri and her family: from the Sun Herald

"I would beg her, 'Please, Terri, help me,' " he said. "You want to believe there's some connection. You hope she's going to sit up and bed and say, 'Hey, I'm really here, but don't tell anybody.' Or, 'I'm really here, tell everybody!' "

But Schiavo never made eye contact. When Wolfson visited her when her parents were there, she never made eye contact with them either, he said. And for all of Wolfson's pleadings and coaxing, he never got what he most wanted: a sign...

Wolfson was dismayed to learn Friday that Barbara Weller, an attorney for the Schindlers, claimed that Schiavo tried to speak. "Terri does not speak," he said. "To claim otherwise reduces her to a fiction."

Who are these doctors turned Congressman who are practicing medicine and law via video-tape? According to ABC News, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and Representatives Dave Weldon (R-FL), Phil Gingrey (R-GA), and Joe Schwarz (R-MI).