Michael Schiavo's Death Wish

The Empire Journal has a scathing article outlining the many conflicts of interest, incompetence, and out-and-out corruption that has beseiged the Schiavo case. Among the tangled web of conflicts of interest that would make a Charlie Brown-flown, tree-bound kite look straight:

In April, 2000, without court approval or knowledge of the Schindlers, Terri Schiavo was moved to Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, operated by Hospice of Florida Suncoast, without the proper certification. Although the certificate was signed by the hospice medical director who was under direct administration of Felos as board chairman, Dr. Victor Gambone, her attending physician at the time, did not sign the certificate of need as mandated by federal law. He has since testified under oath that she was healthy and that Terri was moved to the hospice not on his orders, but rather those of Michael Schiavo.

This underscores the fact that Terri was and is (until the disconnection of her feeding tube) a healthy, cognitively disabled individual. This also underscores the death wish imposed on Terri by Michael Schiavo. Back in 1995, when my mother was inflicted with ovarian cancer, she was moved to the hospice unit of St. Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield, Wisconsin, thinking that she had at best a few weeks to live. Her condition, however, actually improved; so much so that her cancer count had decreased to near zero. She was one of the few who was moved out of hospice due to her improved condition, which was no longer considered to be imminently terminal. She lived for another two years before the ovarian cancer would again consume her body, and she died in the same hospice unit that she was discharged from two years earlier.

My whole point is, a hospice unit is set up in such a way as to care for a terminally ill patient in the final stages of life (usually a week to a month before death). Why move an otherwise physically healthy woman to a hospice center back in 2000, and keep her there, when her condition was anything but terminal?

This is just one point in a whole chronology of missteps, blatant conflicts of interest, and of out-and-out lawbreaking that has occurred. This article is the most comprehensive expose of this travesty of justice I have seen yet. I encourage all to read it.