The Schindler family disagreed, saying Terri Schiavo was a practicing Catholic who loved animals and revered life. They disagreed with the doctors' prognosis and attempted to take guardianship rights away from Michael Schiavo.

The dispute ignited a national debate over the right to die — and live. It involved public actions on both sides of the issue, acts of the Florida Legislature and governor and Congress in allowing federal courts to ensure Terri Schiavo's due process rights had been protected, and, upon her death, a statement from the Vatican and discussion over living wills.

"Mr. Schiavo's overriding concern here was to provide for Terri a peaceful death with dignity," Michael Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, said in a news conference after the woman's death. "This death was not for the siblings, and not for the spouse and not for the parents. This was for Terri."

But Schindler believes the public was not fully informed about his sister's case due to what one critic called "journalistic malpractice."

The media "constantly referred to my sister as vegetative . . . as brain dead" when he says an autopsy did not confirm such, and that a doctor had said Terri Schiavo could have been in a minimally conscious state.

"The press I think went out of the way . . . to justify the killing of my sister by her autopsy report." The autopsy report also said Terri Schiavo showed no signs of suffering from bulimia, or of a heart attack, Schindler said. It concluded the reason for her collapse was unknown.

"Yet that was rarely, if ever, reported," he said.

Schindler believes that media reports shape public discussion.

Public discussion has shifted from one about sanctity of life to quality of life, Schindler said.

He questions the need for the diagnosis "persistent vegetative state," which he says is a subjectively assigned "death sentence" that has no purpose "except devaluing a person's life . . . and making it easier to kill." He likens such prognoses and actions thereafter to years leading up to the Holocaust.

He's worried about the rush to create living wills without careful thought to temporary life support, that prognoses might be wrong.

Schindler said he did not think Terri Schiavo would have fully recovered. But the family at least wanted to try rehabilitation.

"We loved her. She was beautiful. She was sacred to us and sacred in the eyes of God. All we wanted to do is bring her home and care for her."

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E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com