Terri Schiavo case was never solely about medicine

BOSTON — The medical examiners delivered their autopsy report in the most matter-of-fact tone. Terri Schiavo's brain had atrophied to half the normal size for a woman her age. Her eyes, the focus of that famous videotape, saw nothing. She was blind.

The men couldn't say why Terri had collapsed 15 years ago. But they could say she wasn't abused by her husband. They could say that "no amount of treatment or rehabilitation would have reversed" her condition. There was no doubt about it.

Case closed? As the press conference replayed, the television screen spelled out a question for cable viewers: "Does This Change Opinions?" Did the facts of a case that had so divided the country, so politicized the fate of one woman, actually make a difference?

For Schiavo's parents, the answer was no. The Schindlers still insist their daughter related to them and tried to speak. Their lawyer said it only proved "she was not terminal." The president said only that he "was deeply saddened by this case." His brother, the governor of Florida, said he would still try to keep Schiavo alive.

And if the autopsy changed the opinions of politicians such as doctor/Sen. Bill Frist, who disgraced his first profession by diagnosing a videotape, they were not in the mood for apologies.

This case was never solely about medicine. But the question on the TV screen illustrated the times we live in — times when facts can exist in a separate universe from opinions. And a country in which science is not seen as a matter of black and white but increasingly a matter of red and blue.

The Schiavo case is not the only example. The climate is equally apparent in the struggle over what the Bush administration calls "climate change" — and everyone else calls global warming. The only way to justify doing nothing about global warming now is to deliberately muddle the science. It's not an accident that Philip Cooney, the White House official caught editing reports of greenhouse gases, left for Exxon, which has indeed funded doubts.

So, too, the struggle over evolution is no longer overtly between scientists and religious fundamentalists. It's between the science establishment and the handful of frontmen with Ph.D.s who support "intelligent design." Their credentials make it seem as if evolution was also a matter of genuine scientific debate.