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June 1, 2006

Schiavo Neurologist Dies of Cancer

North Country Gazette reports:

One of the most outspoken advocates of the right to die movement and of physician-assisted suicide in the U.S. today has died.

Dr. Ronald E. Cranford, a neurologist and medical ethicist who served for years as the assistant chief of neurology at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minn., died Wednesday in Minneapolis.

Unfortunately, Cranford was a well-known euthanasia advocate who drew national attention in the Terri Schiavo case by testifying that she was in a persistent vegetative state and publicly advocating her death. He was on the board of the Euthanasia Society of America, had ties to the Hemlock Society and testified similarly in other cases.

Years before he categorized Terri Schindler Schiavo as PVS, Cranford advocated removing feeding tubes from society's vulnerable.

"...Years before he categorized Terri Schindler Schiavo in the persistent vegetative state, which led to her death by dehydration, neurologist Dr. Ronald Cranford was building the case for removing feeding tubes from society's vulnerable.

"...The United States has thousands or tens of thousands of patients in vegetative states; nobody knows for sure exactly how many," Cranford wrote in a 1997 Minneapolis Star Tribune opinion piece titled: When a feeding tube borders on the barbaric. (WorldNetDaily. Com, March 23, 2005). "But before long, this country will have several million patients with Alzheimer's dementia. The challenges and costs of maintaining vegetative state patients will pale in comparison to the problems presented by Alzheimer's disease.

"The answer, he suggested, was physician-assisted suicide."

Posted by tim at June 1, 2006 10:13 AM

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• March for Life Welcomes the Schindler Family (video) - Jan 27, 2007
• More Disciplinary Proceedings - Jan 14, 2007
• Update on Robert Schindler - Jan 11, 2007
• March for Life Recap - Jan 08, 2007
• Attorney for Terri Schiavo's Parents Still Speaks Up for Disabled People - Dec 13, 2006
• British Doctors: let us kill disabled babies - Nov 05, 2006
• Suzanne Vitadamo Tells About Family's Fight - Oct 05, 2006
• Haleigh Poutre Making Progress - Sep 05, 2006
• Center for society against abortion, euthanasia to open - Aug 26, 2006

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