He knows he gave a diagnosis.......his words are record ON HIS WEBSITE!
http://frist.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Speeches.Detail&Speech_id=174&Month=3&Year=2005"I asked to see all of the court affidavits and I received those court affidavits and had the opportunity to read through those over the last 48 hours. And my curiosity was piqued even further because of what seemed to be unusual about the case. And so I called one of the neurologists who did evaluate her and evaluated her more extensively than what at least was alleged other neurologists had, and he told me very directly that she is not in a persistent vegetative state. And I said, well, give me a spectrum from this neurologist who examined her, and to be fair, he examined her about two years ago, and to the best of my knowledge, no neurologist has been able to examine her -- Im not positive about that but that's what Ive been told -- but at that time that clearly she was not in a persistent vegetative state. And of 100 patients this neurologist would take care of, she wasn't at the extreme end of her disability.
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Persistent vegetative state, which is what the court has ruled -- I question it. I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office here in the Capitol. And that footage, to me, depicts something very different than persistent vegetative state. One of the classic textbooks that we use in medicine today is called "Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine." In the 16th edition, which was published just this year, 2005, on page 1625, it reads, "the vegetative state signifies an awake but unresponsive state. These patients have emerged from coma after a period of days or weeks to an unresponsive state in which the eyelids are open, giving the appearance of wakefulness." I'll stop quoting from the classic internal medicine textbook, but one last sentence, "in the closely related, minimally conscious state, the patient may make intermittent, rudimentary vocal and motor responses."
So our -- Congress has acted tonight and the House of Representatives acted last night. The approaches are a bit different and I hope that we can resolve those differences. It is clear to me that Congress has a responsibility since other aspects of government at the state level have failed to address this issue. There just seems to be insufficient information to conclude that Terri Schiavo is persistent vegetative state, securing the facts I believe is the first and proper step at this juncture. Whoever does spend time making the diagnosis with Terri does need to spend enough time to make an appropriate diagnosis."