Thursday, March 31, 2005
Bob Schindler spoke at a memorial service for his daughter, Terri Schiavo, on Thursday evening.
Schiavo's Case May Reshape American Law
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, March 31 - The life and death of Terri Schiavo - intensely public, highly polarizing and played out around the clock on the Internet and television- has become a touchstone in American culture. Rarely have the forces of politics, religion and medicine collided so spectacularly, and with such potential for lasting effect.
Ms. Schiavo, the profoundly incapacitated woman whose family split over whether she would have preferred to live or die, forced Americans into a national conversation about the end of life. Her case raised questions about the role of government in private family decisions.
But her legacy may be that she brought an intense dimension - the issue of death and dying - to the battle over what President Bush calls "the culture of life."
Nearly 30 years after the parents of another brain-damaged woman, Karen Ann Quinlan, injected the phrase "right to die" into the lexicon as they fought to unplug her respirator, Ms. Schiavo's case swung the pendulum in the other direction, pushing the debate toward what Wesley J. Smith, an author of books on bioethics, calls " the right to live."
"This is the counterrevolution," said Mr. Smith, who has been challenging what he calls the liberal assumptions of most bioethicists. "I have been frustrated at how difficult it is to bring the starkness of these issues into a bright public discussion. Schiavo did it."
Experts say that unlike the Quinlan case, which established the concept that families can prevail over the state in end-of-life decisions, the Schiavo case created no major legal precedents. But it could well lead to new laws. Already, some states are considering more restrictive end-of-life measures like preventing the withdrawal of a feeding tube without explicit written directions.
That troubles some medical ethicists and doctors.
"I am concerned about the erosion of a very hard-won multiple-decade process of agreeing that these decisions belong inside families," said Dr. Diane E. Meier, an expert in end-of-life care at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "We've always said that autonomy and self-determination does not trump the infinite value of an individual life, that people have the right to control what is done to their own body. I think that is at risk."
For social conservatives who argue that sanctity of life trumps quality of life, Ms. Schiavo came along at the right place and time, at a moment of their ascendancy in American politics. The election last November kept Mr. Bush in the White House and gave Republicans firmer control of Congress, particularly in the Senate, where conservatives gained several seats.
Among those conservative freshmen is Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, who prodded Congress to pass a bill allowing a federal court to review the Schiavo case. The move prompted a backlash, with polls showing an overwhelming majority of Americans opposed to it, though there is no way to assess whether that sentiment will have lasting political effects.
"I am amazed by the attention and the passions that have been aroused by this," Mr. Martinez said. "It may be one of those issues that touches families, that transcends the cultural wars."
Others say that far from transcending the cultural wars, Ms. Schiavo's case landed smack in the middle of them.
"It may be that her legacy is to set off an ongoing debate in American public policy about the sanctity of life and how we are going as a society to make decisions about when life begins, when it ends and what protections it ought to have," said Gary L. Bauer, president of American Values, a conservative group.
That language percolates through other debates that involve clashes of medicine, politics and religion like the fights over abortion and embryonic stem cell research.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a Christian conservative group, drew the connection in an e-mail message to backers who mourned Ms. Schiavo.
"We often hear about the culture of life that we are trying to protect," Mr. Perkins wrote, "yet rarely do we talk about the culture of death."
Ms. Schiavo brought these ideas home in a deeply personal way. Her history had a captivating narrative arc and a compelling cast of characters. The patient: Ms. Schiavo, who had lingered for 15 years in what doctors describe as a "persistent vegetative state." The husband: Michael, painted by some as a villainous adulterer as he sought to have her feeding tube withdrawn. The parents: Robert and Mary Schindler, determined to keep their daughter alive.
As the drama unfolded, television viewers could watch Ms. Schiavo on videotape and make a judgment.
"The closest thing to it, but not quite as poignant, are the debates about stem cell research," said Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, who became familiar with conservative politics when he worked for the Christian Coalition. "But they deal with diseases that touch upon every family, but not a single individual."
The debate also exposed fissures among Republicans, pitting social conservatives who framed the debate around preserving life against those who favor states' rights and limited government. "There was a philosophical train wreck," Mr. Wittmann said.
The case also fueled conservatives' anger over what they regarded as a runaway judiciary, laying the groundwork for future fights over Mr. Bush's judicial nominees.
"It shows just how much power the courts have usurped from the legislative and executive branches," Mr. Perkins said, "that they now hold within their hands the power of life and death."
The courts have been weighing in on such issues for years. One of the first major cases was in 1976, with Ms. Quinlan. The New Jersey Supreme Court permitted her parents to turn off her respirator.
In 1990, in the case of another brain-damaged woman, Nancy Cruzan, the United States Supreme Court recognized for the first time a right to forgo unwanted treatment. In 1997, Oregon passed an assisted suicide law, letting doctors prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Bush administration's challenge to the law.
In all these battles, the common theme was that medical technology had run amok, stripping patients of their dignity at the end of their lives.
"In the classic cases around death and dying, they were again and again efforts by families to get the patient out of the medical grip," said David J. Rothman, director of the Center for the Study of Society and Medicine at Columbia University.
The Schiavo case, Professor Rothman said, is "really the effort to force physicians to intervene, rather than force them to desist."
"So you've got a shift here," he said.
That shift made for odd bedfellows. Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, joined Mr. Smith, the bioethicist, in calling for legal action "to let Terri Schiavo live." Advocates for disability rights prompted Democrats like Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa to take up her cause.
Mr. Martinez, who said his sister suffered a brain disorder that left her unable to communicate at the time she died, called it "a beautiful moment of coming together for a sick and disabled person." He said he intended to work with Mr. Harkin to press Congress to "provide an avenue of due process and legal recourse which may not exist today" for patients like Ms. Schiavo.
Around the country, state lawmakers are contemplating changes, as well. The Alabama Starvation and Dehydration Prevention Act would bar the withdrawal of a feeding tube without explicit written instructions. A lawmaker in Michigan is proposing a measure that would prevent an adulterer from making medical decisions for an incapacitated spouse.
Some medical ethicists say they are horrified. R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, foresees a chilling effect on hospitals and doctors, who may become uncomfortable carrying out a patient's wishes against the backdrop of a family feud. Professor Charo said there was no way for lawmakers to predict all the permutations that play into decisions on death and dying.
"If you go back to Cruzan, the presumption was in favor of extending biological life," she said. "Over the last 30 years, the presumption has slowly shifted toward allowing people to die. What we are seeing is the counterinsurgency."
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Friday, April 01, 2005
today's papers
Age Before Booty
By Eric Umansky
Posted Thursday, March 31, 2005, at 12:49 AM PT
The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal world-wide newsbox, and USA Today all lead with the Supreme Court making it easier to sue for age discrimination but also making it harder to win those suits. By a 5-3 vote, the justices ruled that workers over 40 can sue for discrimination regardless of the company's intent. On the other hand, the court said companies can enact polices that work against older employees so long as "the differentiation is based on reasonable factors other than age." Some lower courts had ruled that preferences for younger workers could be justified only by "business necessity." The New York Times and Los Angeles Times both off-lead the ruling and lead locally.
The WP off-leads a classified Army study suggesting the Army's new armored transport vehicle, the Stryker, has more glitches than a Yugo. The computers freeze, the add-on armor kills overall handling, and the Stryker's main weapon, a grenade launcher, can't get off a good shot on the move. The Army report says the maintenance problems are "getting worse not better." Although the Post paints a grim picture, it also mentions in passing that "many soldiers in the field say they like the vehicle." It doesn't explain why. And while we're at it, given that the report itself was "obtained by the Washington Post," why not put the whole thing online?
USAT fronts a new study showing that about one in four veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who've visited VA hospitals were diagnosed with mental disorders. The most intriguing part of the story is a graphic that isn't online (yet): The number of such diagnoses jumped from 13 percent last February to 19 percent in July and 26 percent in December.
One Marine was killed yesterday in Iraq. Also, gunmen attacked two separate caravans of Shiite pilgrims, wounding about a dozen and killing one. And a car bomb hit outside an elementary school in Baghdad, killing a guard and wounding five.
The Journal goes inside with a two-year-old FDA internal report, released yesterday, showing that the agency has been approving licenses for medical devices despite the fact that an estimated half the time companies haven't delivered promised safety studies. The FDA reportedly does such a poor job of tracking the studies that it couldn't figure out exactly how many were missing. The FDA insists that things are much improved since the study was written.
The WP fronts the administration requiring Cabinet heads to hang around the White House a few hours per week. The Post quotes the usual suspects. "It confirms how little the domestic Cabinet secretaries have to do with making policy," said one scholar. And then there's Clinton's former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala. "Maybe [Chief of Staff Andy Card] is institutionalizing what is a natural process," she said. "He's an awfully good administrator."
The NYT and WP front the Vatican acknowledging that the pope now has a nasal feeding tube. Shortly before the announcement was made, the pope appeared in front of his apartment window and, for the second time in four days, failed to speak.
As another federal appeals court refused to consider the Terri Schiavo case, the NYT reefers one of the court's judges tsk-tsking President Bush and Congress for acting "in a manner demonstrably at odds with our founding fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people." The judge is a socially conservative Republican appointed by the first President Bush.
The NYT notices something that is finally bringing together some Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Jerusalem: homophobia. A few leaders from the three religions made a joint appearance decrying a planned 10-day "WorldPride" event slated for the city. "We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty," said one Muslim cleric. "This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem." One fine American rabbi who helped organize yesterday's announcement concurred, explaining, "This is not the homo land, this is the Holy Land."
Eric Umansky writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.
today's papers
Age Before Booty
By Eric Umansky
Posted Thursday, March 31, 2005, at 12:49 AM PT
The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal world-wide newsbox, and USA Today all lead with the Supreme Court making it easier to sue for age discrimination but also making it harder to win those suits. By a 5-3 vote, the justices ruled that workers over 40 can sue for discrimination regardless of the company's intent. On the other hand, the court said companies can enact polices that work against older employees so long as "the differentiation is based on reasonable factors other than age." Some lower courts had ruled that preferences for younger workers could be justified only by "business necessity." The New York Times and Los Angeles Times both off-lead the ruling and lead locally.
The WP off-leads a classified Army study suggesting the Army's new armored transport vehicle, the Stryker, has more glitches than a Yugo. The computers freeze, the add-on armor kills overall handling, and the Stryker's main weapon, a grenade launcher, can't get off a good shot on the move. The Army report says the maintenance problems are "getting worse not better." Although the Post paints a grim picture, it also mentions in passing that "many soldiers in the field say they like the vehicle." It doesn't explain why. And while we're at it, given that the report itself was "obtained by the Washington Post," why not put the whole thing online?
USAT fronts a new study showing that about one in four veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who've visited VA hospitals were diagnosed with mental disorders. The most intriguing part of the story is a graphic that isn't online (yet): The number of such diagnoses jumped from 13 percent last February to 19 percent in July and 26 percent in December.
One Marine was killed yesterday in Iraq. Also, gunmen attacked two separate caravans of Shiite pilgrims, wounding about a dozen and killing one. And a car bomb hit outside an elementary school in Baghdad, killing a guard and wounding five.
The Journal goes inside with a two-year-old FDA internal report, released yesterday, showing that the agency has been approving licenses for medical devices despite the fact that an estimated half the time companies haven't delivered promised safety studies. The FDA reportedly does such a poor job of tracking the studies that it couldn't figure out exactly how many were missing. The FDA insists that things are much improved since the study was written.
The WP fronts the administration requiring Cabinet heads to hang around the White House a few hours per week. The Post quotes the usual suspects. "It confirms how little the domestic Cabinet secretaries have to do with making policy," said one scholar. And then there's Clinton's former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala. "Maybe [Chief of Staff Andy Card] is institutionalizing what is a natural process," she said. "He's an awfully good administrator."
The NYT and WP front the Vatican acknowledging that the pope now has a nasal feeding tube. Shortly before the announcement was made, the pope appeared in front of his apartment window and, for the second time in four days, failed to speak.
As another federal appeals court refused to consider the Terri Schiavo case, the NYT reefers one of the court's judges tsk-tsking President Bush and Congress for acting "in a manner demonstrably at odds with our founding fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people." The judge is a socially conservative Republican appointed by the first President Bush.
The NYT notices something that is finally bringing together some Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Jerusalem: homophobia. A few leaders from the three religions made a joint appearance decrying a planned 10-day "WorldPride" event slated for the city. "We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty," said one Muslim cleric. "This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem." One fine American rabbi who helped organize yesterday's announcement concurred, explaining, "This is not the homo land, this is the Holy Land."
Eric Umansky writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.
Pope Develops High Fever From Infection as His Health Weakens
By IAN FISHER
VATICAN CITY, Friday, April 1 - The health of Pope John Paul II hit another serious crisis on Thursday, after he developed a high fever because of a urinary tract infection, the Vatican said.
In a spare statement of three sentences, his chief spokesman, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said the 84-year-old pope, who has looked gaunt and weak as his health has declined drastically in recent weeks, was receiving antibiotics to treat the infection.
"The clinical situation is being closely watched by the Vatican medical team treating him," the statement said.
With little information coming out of the Vatican - and amid a flow pilgrims to St. Peter's Square with the news that the pope's life may be in danger - there seemed conflicting signs of just how grave this latest crisis is.
Quoting anonymous Vatican officials, the Italian news agency ANSA said that the pope, fitted with a feeding tube only on Wednesday, was responding well to the antibiotics. Nicola Cerbino, a spokesman for the Gemelli hospital clinic in Rome, where the pope was admitted twice in February with the flu and serious problems breathing, said there were no plans to readmit him "tonight - at least for the moment."
Yet Italian news agencies reported that the pope, suffering for years from Parkinson's disease, had been administered the Catholic sacrament for the sick and dying, often called Last Rites or Extreme Unction. There was no confirmation from the Vatican, and spokesmen for the pope could not be reached early on Friday morning.
The last time he is known to have been administered last rites was on May 13, 1981, after he was shot by a would-be assassin in St. Peter's Square, almost three years after he was chosen pope.
Early Friday morning, the pitch of worry around the Vatican and among the faithful was especially high, after a Holy Week in which he was too sick to attend any of the ceremonies except for mass on Easter Sunday. Even then, he was so weak that no words came out of his mouth when he tried to deliver his traditional blessing from the window of his apartment of St. Peter's Square.
On Wednesday, in his most recent public appearance, he tried to speak again, but also failed. Hours later, the Vatican announced that doctors had threaded a feeding tube through his nose and into his stomach to ensure that he was properly nourished. The news came in the first medical statement from the Vatican in more than two weeks and unlike a string of earlier more upbeat reports, it characterized the pope's recovery as "slow."
After months of what seemed relatively stable health, the pope's condition has spiraled since Feb. 1, when he was admitted to Gemelli hospital suffering from flu, fever and spasms of the throat that caused severe problems breathing. He was discharged on Feb. 10, but was rushed to the hospital two weeks later with similar symptoms. That night, doctors performed a tracheotomy to insert a breathing tube into his windpipe.
Doctors said that urinary tract infections are usually treatable, but that the pope's age and advanced illness could present complications.
Dr. Harry Fisch, professor of clinical urology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, said such infections in men the pope's age typically come from the prostate "and they can be severe."
"These infections tend to be readily treatable with antibiotics," Dr. Fisch said. "They are normally not life-threatening, but in the elderly and debilitated, they can be. The fever won't drop immediately. It can take a day."
Dr. Fisch said that a catheter - a tube inserted into the bladder of bed-bound patients to drain urine - can make such infections worse. The Vatican has not said whether the pope has such a catheter.
Doctors said that infections often cause a drop in blood pressure - and several unconfirmed news reports said the pope was in fact suffering from a loss of blood pressure. Such a drop in blood pressure, doctors said, can lead to decreased levels of consciousness.
Just after midnight here, the entrance to St. Peter's Square was ringed by dozens of television cameras and journalists, as well as pilgrims and tourists peering up to the window of the pope's apartment, where he has made his most recent, pained appearances.
The light in his apartment was shut off around 11 p.m. local time Thursday, later than the pope's usual bedtime. But a light in a room with medical equipment remained on past midnight, though with an extremely small circle of people attending to the pope and his health, it was impossible know whether this was significant.
In the last two months of this most serious phase of the pope's illness, the faithful seemed of two minds about his decline: Despite many contentious positions on social issues, the pope has remained extremely popular among the faithful, and many pilgrims have expressed deep sorrow at the prospect that he might die soon.
But many have worried too about his deep suffering - evident in every recent public appearance.
"He'll finally be at peace," said James Butler, 16, part of group of students from Dublin visiting Rome, who arrived at the Vatican just after midnight on Friday to pay their respects.
Unlike in the pope's other recent health crises, Italian news media switched their programming to extensive coverage not only of the pope's health, but of his life and legacy. The state broadcaster RAI interrupted its television political talk shows on Thursday to ask guests to comment on the pope. Several stations began airing long retrospectives of his 26-year pontificate, one of the longest in the history of the Roman Catholic church.
Elisabeth Rosenthal of The International Herald Tribune and Jason Horowitz of The New York Times contributed reporting from Rome for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top
By IAN FISHER
VATICAN CITY, Friday, April 1 - The health of Pope John Paul II hit another serious crisis on Thursday, after he developed a high fever because of a urinary tract infection, the Vatican said.
In a spare statement of three sentences, his chief spokesman, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said the 84-year-old pope, who has looked gaunt and weak as his health has declined drastically in recent weeks, was receiving antibiotics to treat the infection.
"The clinical situation is being closely watched by the Vatican medical team treating him," the statement said.
With little information coming out of the Vatican - and amid a flow pilgrims to St. Peter's Square with the news that the pope's life may be in danger - there seemed conflicting signs of just how grave this latest crisis is.
Quoting anonymous Vatican officials, the Italian news agency ANSA said that the pope, fitted with a feeding tube only on Wednesday, was responding well to the antibiotics. Nicola Cerbino, a spokesman for the Gemelli hospital clinic in Rome, where the pope was admitted twice in February with the flu and serious problems breathing, said there were no plans to readmit him "tonight - at least for the moment."
Yet Italian news agencies reported that the pope, suffering for years from Parkinson's disease, had been administered the Catholic sacrament for the sick and dying, often called Last Rites or Extreme Unction. There was no confirmation from the Vatican, and spokesmen for the pope could not be reached early on Friday morning.
The last time he is known to have been administered last rites was on May 13, 1981, after he was shot by a would-be assassin in St. Peter's Square, almost three years after he was chosen pope.
Early Friday morning, the pitch of worry around the Vatican and among the faithful was especially high, after a Holy Week in which he was too sick to attend any of the ceremonies except for mass on Easter Sunday. Even then, he was so weak that no words came out of his mouth when he tried to deliver his traditional blessing from the window of his apartment of St. Peter's Square.
On Wednesday, in his most recent public appearance, he tried to speak again, but also failed. Hours later, the Vatican announced that doctors had threaded a feeding tube through his nose and into his stomach to ensure that he was properly nourished. The news came in the first medical statement from the Vatican in more than two weeks and unlike a string of earlier more upbeat reports, it characterized the pope's recovery as "slow."
After months of what seemed relatively stable health, the pope's condition has spiraled since Feb. 1, when he was admitted to Gemelli hospital suffering from flu, fever and spasms of the throat that caused severe problems breathing. He was discharged on Feb. 10, but was rushed to the hospital two weeks later with similar symptoms. That night, doctors performed a tracheotomy to insert a breathing tube into his windpipe.
Doctors said that urinary tract infections are usually treatable, but that the pope's age and advanced illness could present complications.
Dr. Harry Fisch, professor of clinical urology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, said such infections in men the pope's age typically come from the prostate "and they can be severe."
"These infections tend to be readily treatable with antibiotics," Dr. Fisch said. "They are normally not life-threatening, but in the elderly and debilitated, they can be. The fever won't drop immediately. It can take a day."
Dr. Fisch said that a catheter - a tube inserted into the bladder of bed-bound patients to drain urine - can make such infections worse. The Vatican has not said whether the pope has such a catheter.
Doctors said that infections often cause a drop in blood pressure - and several unconfirmed news reports said the pope was in fact suffering from a loss of blood pressure. Such a drop in blood pressure, doctors said, can lead to decreased levels of consciousness.
Just after midnight here, the entrance to St. Peter's Square was ringed by dozens of television cameras and journalists, as well as pilgrims and tourists peering up to the window of the pope's apartment, where he has made his most recent, pained appearances.
The light in his apartment was shut off around 11 p.m. local time Thursday, later than the pope's usual bedtime. But a light in a room with medical equipment remained on past midnight, though with an extremely small circle of people attending to the pope and his health, it was impossible know whether this was significant.
In the last two months of this most serious phase of the pope's illness, the faithful seemed of two minds about his decline: Despite many contentious positions on social issues, the pope has remained extremely popular among the faithful, and many pilgrims have expressed deep sorrow at the prospect that he might die soon.
But many have worried too about his deep suffering - evident in every recent public appearance.
"He'll finally be at peace," said James Butler, 16, part of group of students from Dublin visiting Rome, who arrived at the Vatican just after midnight on Friday to pay their respects.
Unlike in the pope's other recent health crises, Italian news media switched their programming to extensive coverage not only of the pope's health, but of his life and legacy. The state broadcaster RAI interrupted its television political talk shows on Thursday to ask guests to comment on the pope. Several stations began airing long retrospectives of his 26-year pontificate, one of the longest in the history of the Roman Catholic church.
Elisabeth Rosenthal of The International Herald Tribune and Jason Horowitz of The New York Times contributed reporting from Rome for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Andrew Susser was fired by Bank of America after putting this cover on a report on the casino and lodging industry called "Checking In."
March 29, 2005
On Wall Street, a Rise in Dismissals Over Ethics
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
Two senior investment bankers at Bank of America were summoned to a meeting this month where their boss, visibly uncomfortable and flanked by bank lawyers, read them a statement. They were both dismissed and asked to leave the building immediately. The decision was final.
Stunned, the bankers asked if they had broken any regulations. No, they were told. Nor had they traded on any inside information. Within the hour, they had turned in their BlackBerrys and laptops and were on their way home to the suburbs.
In the ruthlessly competitive world of investment banking, these two men had been doing what presumably was their job. Acting on a tip from a rival banker, they had called a company preparing to merge with another and asked to get in on the deal. In a different era, such an action might well have been seen as an example of what hungry bankers do to secure an edge with a client and maybe even a better bonus - not an inappropriate use of confidential information and cause for termination.
But with regulatory scrutiny heightened after the collapse of Enron and other companies, corporations and their boards are adopting zero-tolerance policies. Increasingly, they are holding their employees to lofty standards of business and personal behavior. The result is a wave of abrupt firings as corporations move to stop perceived breaches of ethics by their employees that could result in law enforcement action or public relations disasters.
"We are in a regulatory frenzy," said Ira Lee Sorkin, a senior white-collar crime lawyer at Carter Ledyard & Milburn in Manhattan. "Corporations are acting out of fear and they don't want to take a chance that employees did something wrong under their watch, so they are basically cleaning house. Someone has to say enough."
The seemingly frantic reach for the moral high ground is driven as much by self-interest as any attempt at righteousness, now that boards and chief executives have seen how public scandals can torpedo stock prices, alienate customers and end careers.
The reasons for the dismissals vary widely, ranging from actions that are potentially illegal to conduct that is unseemly. Last week, for example, Thomas M. Coughlin, a former vice chairman and director, was forced to resign from Wal-Mart Stores over questions relating to his knowledge of corporate gift card and expense account abuses. Wal-Mart also referred the case to the Justice Department. Earlier this month, insurance giant American International Group fired two senior executives for refusing to cooperate with a regulatory investigation.
At Boeing, Harry C. Stonecipher, the chief executive, was abruptly pushed out this month by his board for having a consensual affair with an executive, behavior that in a more permissive time might even have been winked at.
"There is a new kind of Puritanism," said Marjorie Kelly, editor of Business Ethics magazine, replacing what Ms. Kelly said was an era of "arrogance and ignorance, an attitude that boys will be boys."
There are exceptions, of course. After paying a $300 million fine to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it overstated advertising revenue, Time Warner elected last week not to dismiss the executives, including the chief financial officer, who approved the fraudulent accounting. The three officials settled separate charges of securities law violations without admitting or denying guilt.
But the reaction has been most severe on Wall Street, where investment banks, mutual funds and insurers have felt the sting of legal prosecution for ethical lapses most acutely.
Bank of America, which has paid nearly $1 billion in fines over the last year, in many ways exemplifies this trend. Earlier this year, the bank acted in a similarly extreme fashion when it fired a highly regarded bond analyst, Andrew Susser, for his stab at humor in compiling a research report on the casino and lodging industry. On its cover, which carried the title "Checking In," Mr. Susser's face was superimposed over the body of a woman in a cocktail party dress and heels, as he was carried over the threshold by another man. There is no evidence that any client complained. Instead, the bank concluded on its own that the image was inappropriate.
It is not only Bank of America that is cracking down.
Citigroup, which has been plagued by a series of ethical lapses by its employees and has suffered a decline in stock price as a result, recently fired three senior executives after the breakdown within the firm's private banking unit in Japan. Japanese regulators forced Citigroup to close its private bank, based in Tokyo, because of numerous violations, stemming from a lack of internal controls, including potential money laundering in one account. One of the fired executives, Thomas W. Jones, has filed a lawsuit against a consultant who wrote an internal report on the matter. Mr. Jones said he was not at fault.
Next month, Citigroup will start an online ethics training program that will be mandatory for all of its 300,000 employees.
At Goldman Sachs, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the chief executive, will moderate 20 forums this year on various business judgment and ethical issues with all the bank's managing directors. Among the guest speakers invited by Mr. Paulson is Eliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, who talked to Goldman bankers last month about various ethical pitfalls.
Given the scandals of recent years - Wall Street banks writing research reports biased in favor of corporate clients or doling out hot initial public offerings to win business, for example - it is not at all surprising that banks have been more rigorous in monitoring the behavior of their employees. But the two Bank of America employees, Eric Corrigan and Thomas Chen, say that Wall Street's new broad brush has tarred them unfairly.
"We are scapegoats," said Mr. Chen, 37. "We agree that there should be zero tolerance when rules are broken, but we didn't break any rules. This was a summary execution. We just need to re-establish our reputation because without that you can't be an investment banker."
In a statement, a Bank of America spokesman said: "The environment in the financial sector continues to evolve and in any environment we expect our associates to maintain the highest possible ethical standards in everything that they do."
For Mr. Corrigan, Mr. Chen and Thomas W. Heath, the J. P. Morgan banker who provided the information to Mr. Corrigan, the fall from grace has been precipitous. Mr. Corrigan and Mr. Chen were successful and respected bankers who had received generous bonuses for their work last year.
Mr. Heath had just finished working on one of the biggest bank deals of his career, and had accepted an offer to take his flourishing practice to Bank of America. J. P. Morgan has since fired him, and Bank of America has rescinded its job offer. Now all three are accused of inappropriately using confidential information - a charge that, in many ways, brands them with Wall Street's version of the scarlet letter.
Indeed, the story paints a vivid picture of how these changing times have made the exchange of information and market rumor - long the lifeblood of deal making on Wall Street - an exercise fraught with risk.
Mr. Corrigan and Mr. Heath first met last month to discuss how they might work together once Mr. Heath joined Bank of America, potentially as Mr. Corrigan's boss. No specific deals were discussed until a few days later, when Mr. Heath called Mr. Corrigan at the request of Bank of America executives. At the time, Mr. Heath and J. P. Morgan were advising Hibernia, a Louisiana-based bank, in its merger talks with Capital One, the credit card issuer.
During that conversation, according to Mr. Corrigan, Mr. Heath voluntarily disclosed J. P. Morgan's role in the deal.
Mr. Corrigan said he was surprised that Mr. Heath would be so forthcoming. But he added that he and Mr. Chen had already heard rumors of the deal, which was formally announced on March 7, so he asked Mr. Chen to call an executive at Capital One. Mr. Corrigan also said that he told his boss about the exchange.
Such an approach is standard investment banking behavior, said Mr. Chen and Mr. Corrigan, and neither felt he had crossed any line. Indeed, since Capital One was already a deal participant, both men argued, Mr. Chen did not break the circle of trust.
"I didn't even call my wife," Mr. Chen said. "I had a relationship with the guy at Capital One, so I put a call in to him."
While Mr. Heath acknowledges that he erred in disclosing the information, he said he did so in response to a query from Mr. Corrigan and under the condition that the information not be used.
"I had been asked by Bank of America to call Eric to discuss mutual accounts and smooth feelings as I would be assuming his group head position," Mr. Heath said. "During the course of our conversation Eric said he was curious as to what I was working on. I told him that the information was bound in the strictest confidentiality, to which he agreed."
Mr. Corrigan denies that he made such a query or that Mr. Heath asked that the information remain confidential.
No matter the details, "The pendulum has swung too far," said Herbert A. Lurie, a former top investment banker at Merrill Lynch, where Mr. Chen once worked. "Tom Heath clearly did something wrong. He was working on a deal and he told competitive parties about it. But Tom Chen just called a party to the deal. In a normal world, Tom would have been given a hard time for not making the call."
For Bank of America, operating in today's brave new regulatory world, such subtleties are immaterial. In the bank's view, Mr. Corrigan and Mr. Chen exercised bad judgment in contacting the client after Mr. Heath's phone call - especially since Mr. Heath claimed the information was given in confidence - and that was reason enough to fire them.
Both Mr. Chen and Mr. Corrigan have hired lawyers and said that they were considering their legal options. Mr. Heath declined to comment on his future plans.
While Mr. Corrigan and Mr. Chen both realize that they may never work on Wall Street again, they said they were determined to at least make it clear that they were men to be trusted.
"I just need to restore my integrity," Mr. Corrigan said. "I want to be able to look into my kids' eyes and tell them I didn't do anything wrong."
Micheline Maynard contributed reporting for this article
A file photograph shows Pope John Paul II during his weekly general audience in Rome October 2, 1996. Vatican officials are increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for Pope John Paul's full recovery from his ailments, with many agreeing that he has entered a new and perhaps final phase of his long papacy. REUTERS/Photo by Paul Hanna
Vatican Mood Pessimistic on Full Pope Recovery
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:55 p.m. ET
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Vatican officials are increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for Pope John Paul's full recovery from his ailments, with many agreeing that he has entered a new and perhaps final phase of his long papacy.
The 84-year-old Pope has been convalescing from throat surgery for more than a month now and aides say he is disappointed by the slow pace of his recovery.
The Vatican sources, all clerics who work in the Vatican, spoke on condition of anonymity Thursday about the mood inside the tiny city-state where the Pope is supreme sovereign.
Speaking a day after doctors began feeding the Pontiff via a tube in his nose, they expressed various shades of pessimism.
``We are on standby for anything,'' one priest who works in an important Vatican department said.
``Hardly anyone thinks the situation will improve but everyone is hoping for a miracle,'' he said.
Doctors Wednesday inserted a feeding tube through the Pope's nose and into his stomach to try to boost his strength and help his recovery.
``If you add up Parkinson's disease, his age, his previous stomach operations, his breathing difficulties, his digestive problems, it makes for a pretty grim picture,'' the priest said.
Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn said the Pope was ``approaching, as far as a person can tell, the end of his life,'' the Austrian news agency APA reported.
The Pope has difficultly swallowing because Parkinson's Disease limits muscle movement. He has had a breathing tube, known as a cannula, in his throat since Feb. 24.
The cannula is expected to be permanent. The nasal feeding tube is expected to be temporary but if he does not regain the ability to eat normally it may have to be replaced with a permanent tube inserted directly into his stomach.
A DISAPPOINTED POPE
``I know the Pope is very disappointed with the progress of his rehabilitation and would like it to be much faster,'' said another source, a Vatican monsignor.
``This is a new phase in this papacy,'' the source said, adding the Pope would most likely have to face what looks set to be ``a permanent state of precarious health.''
The source said the Pope was still being briefed on Church business and was able ``to communicate both in writing and speaking.''
Shortly before the feeding tube was inserted Wednesday, the Pope dramatically failed in his efforts to speak in public for the second time in four days.
But the monsignor said the Pope has been able to speak in private, otherwise he would not have asked for a microphone on both occasions.
``Everyone here is worried,'' said another cleric.
All four Vatican sources said the Pope was still lucid and alert despite his physical difficulties.
``No one is trying to pull the wool over his eyes,'' one of the monsignors said.
A Vatican statement Wednesday was at pains to say the Pope was still in charge.
The statement said the Pope was spending ``many hours of the day'' in an armchair, celebrating Mass in his private chapel, and was in ``working contact with his aides, directly following the activity of the Holy See and the Church.''
The Pope underwent a tracheotomy on Feb. 24 in Rome's Gemelli Hospital, where he spent a total of 28 days in two stints in February and March.
Maureen Dowd
OP-ED COLUMNIST
I Spy a Screw-Up
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Like the new Woody Allen movie, "Melinda and Melinda," it is possible to view today's big story on the tremendous intelligence failures before the Iraq war as either comedy or tragedy, depending on how you look at it.
For instance, on the comic side, The Times reported yesterday that administration officials were relieved that the new report by a presidential commission had "found no evidence that political pressure from the White House or Pentagon contributed to the mistaken intelligence."
That's hilarious.
As necessity is the mother of invention, political pressure was the father of conveniently botched intelligence.
Dick Cheney and the neocons at the Pentagon started with the conclusion they wanted, then massaged and manipulated the intelligence to back up their wishful thinking.
As The New Republic reported, Mr. Cheney lurked at the C.I.A. in the summer of 2002, an intimidating presence for young analysts. And Douglas Feith set up the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon as a shadow intelligence agency to manufacture propaganda bolstering the administration's case.
The Office of Special Plans turned to the con man Ahmad Chalabi to come up with the evidence they needed. The Iraqi National Congress obliged with information that has now been debunked as exaggerated or fabricated. One gem was the hard-drinking relative of a Chalabi aide, a secret source code-named Curveball, who claimed to verify the mobile weapons labs.
Mr. Cheney and his "Gestapo office," as Colin Powell called it, then shoehorned all their meshugas about Saddam's aluminum tubes, weapons labs, drones and Al Qaeda links into Mr. Powell's U.N. speech.
The former secretary of state spent four days and three nights at the C.I.A. before making the presentation, trying to vet the material, because he knew that Mr. Cheney, who had an idée fixe about Saddam, was trying to tap into his credibility and use him as a battering ram.
He told Germany's Stern magazine that he was "furious and angry" that he had been given bum information about Iraq's arsenal: "Some of the information was wrong. I did not know this at the time."
The vice president and the neocons were in a fever to bypass the C.I.A. and conjure up a case to attack Saddam, even though George Tenet was panting to be of service. When Mr. Tenet put out the new National Intelligence Estimate on Oct. 2, 2002, nine days before the Senate vote on the war resolution and after our troops and aircraft carriers were getting into position for battle, there was one key change: suddenly the agency agreed with Mr. Cheney that Iraq was pursuing the atomic bomb.
Charles Robb, the former senator and governor of Virginia, and Laurence Silberman, a hard-core conservative appeals court judge, headed the commission. Unlike Tom Kean, Judge Silberman held secret meetings; he made sure the unpleasantness wouldn't come up until Mr. Bush had won re-election.
It is laughable that the report offers its most scorching criticism of the C.I.A. when the C.I.A. was simply doing what the White House and Pentagon wanted. Isn't that why Mr. Tenet was given the Medal of Freedom? (Freedom from facts.)
The hawks don't want to learn any lessons here. If they had to do it again, they'd do it the same way. The imaginary weapons and Osama link were just a marketing tool and shiny distraction, something to keep the public from crying while they went to war for reasons unrelated to any nuclear threat.
The 9/11 attacks gave the neocons an opening for their dreams of remaking the Middle East, and they drove the Third Infantry Division through it.
The president planned to announce today that he would put into place many of the commission's recommendations, including an interagency center on proliferation designed to play down turf battles among intelligence agencies.
As Michael Isikoff and Dan Klaidman reported in Newsweek, in the three and a half years since 9/11, the intelligence agencies still haven't learned how to share what they know. At the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the Homeland Security guy complained he was frozen out by the F.B.I. and C.I.A.
Like "Melinda and Melinda," the other side of this wacky saga is deadly serious. There are, after all, more than 1,500 dead American soldiers, Al Qaeda terrorists on the loose and real nuclear-bomb programs in Iran and North Korea that we know nothing about. No laughs there.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
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At a meeting this morning, President Bush was flanked by the men who led the commission. At left, Charles S. Robb. At right, Laurence H. Silberman.
Panel Says 'Dead Wrong' Data on Prewar Iraq Demands Overhaul
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, March 31 - The American intelligence community was "dead wrong" about Iraq's weapons arsenal in large part because of an outdated Cold War mentality and a vast, lumbering bureaucracy that continues to shackle dedicated and capable people, a presidential commission said today.
"The intelligence community must be transformed - a goal that would be difficult to meet even in the best of all possible worlds," the commission said in its report to President Bush. "And we do not live in the best of worlds."
The commission said the erroneous assumption by intelligence agencies that Saddam Hussein possessed deadly chemical and biological weapons had damaged American credibility before a world audience, and that the damage would take years to undo.
Only systemic changes in thinking and acting - changes that will surely bring discomfort to agencies and individuals - will bring the intelligence system to a point where it can cope with the dangers of the 21st century, the commission said. It said, too, that some recent attempts at change - notably the intelligence reorganization act that created the powerful position of national intelligence director - did not go far enough.
The panel, whose nine members included Democrats and Republicans, noted pointedly that three and a half years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had built mighty industrial and military forces that helped force Germany to its knees and were about to vanquish Japan. Three and a half years after Sept. 11, 2001, the panel said, there has been no comparable awakening of the intelligence bureaucracy to defeat a network of deadly, far more elusive foes.
The Sept. 11 attacks did lead to creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which absorbed a number of agencies in the biggest government reorganization in half a century. The commission report today called for further government changes, including a new counter-proliferation center to coordinate data throughout the intelligence bureaucracy on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and a reorganization of the Justice Department to enable one office, not several, to handle intelligence, counterintelligence and counterterrorism.
Other, more mundane changes were recommended: better training "at all stages of an intelligence professional's career," for instance, and a rethinking of the intelligence briefing given daily to the president. "The daily intelligence briefings given to you before the Iraq war were flawed," the commission stated, addressing Mr. Bush.
Despite some conspicuous successes, like exposing a nuclear-proliferation network run by a rogue Pakistani scientist and gathering significant data on Libya's arsenal, America's intelligence agencies are not keeping up with the deadly threats the country now faces, the panel concluded.
"There is no more important intelligence mission than understanding the worst weapons that our enemies possess, and how they intend to use them against us," the commission declared. "These are their deepest secrets, and unlocking them must be our highest priority."
President Bush said today he agreed that the intelligence bureaucracy "needs fundamental change," and he pledged to try to bring it about. "I asked these distinguished individuals to give me an unvarnished look at our intelligence community, and they have delivered," he said.
Copies of the report were distributed to members of Congress, and the lawmakers are certain to debate its findings, and what to do about them. The report, several hundred pages long, contains portions that are classified and were not made public.
Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was pleased by the report. "I don't think there should be any doubt that we have now heard it all regarding prewar intelligence," Mr. Roberts told The Associated Press.
Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, leading Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told The A.P. that the faults were obviously widespread. "I don't think you can blame any one person, although the buck does stop at the top of every one of these agencies," Mr. Skelton said.
President Bush created the commission, headed by Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal appeals court judge, and Charles S. Robb, a former Virginia governor and senator, early in 2004. The presidential order directed the panel to investigate intelligence-gathering and analysis - not the use that policymakers made of the intelligence.
The false assumptions about Iraq's arsenal were not the result of deliberate distortion, nor were they influenced by pressure from outside the agencies, the Silberman-Robb commission said. Rather, it said, they came about because the intelligence bureaucracy collected far too little information, "and much of what they did collect was either worthless or misleading."
Moreover, the commission concluded, intelligence officials failed to make it clear to policymakers how deficient their information was.
Describing the intelligence bureaucracy as "fragmented, loosely managed and poorly coordinated," the commission said the government's 15 intelligence organizations "are a 'community' in name only and rarely act with a unity of purpose."
The panel, officially called the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, echoed some of the findings of earlier inquiries into American intelligence failures.
As did the 9/11 commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee, which also studied intelligence lapses leading up to the American-led war against Iraq, the Silberman-Robb commission singled out some of the most familiar entities in the bureaucracy - the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation - as well as the huge National Security Agency, much of whose function is electronic eavesdropping and analysis.
"The C.I.A. and N.S.A. may be sleek and omniscient in the movies, but in real life they and other intelligence agencies are vast government bureaucracies," the nine-member commission told the president.
"They are bureaucracies filled with talented people and armed with sophisticated technological tools, but talent and tools do not suspend the iron laws of bureaucratic behavior," the commission said. "The intelligence community is a closed world, and many insiders admitted to us that it has an almost perfect record of resisting external recommendations."
And despite the allusion to the talented people within the bureaucracies, the commission hinted that intelligence agencies need more diversity in their ranks, and new approaches to their jobs. "We need an intelligence community that is truly integrated, far more imaginative and willing to run risks, open to a new generation of Americans, and receptive to new technologies," the commission said. (Previous examinations of American intelligence agencies have said they need more people fluent in various languages, including Arabic.)
The F.B.I. has made progress in shifting itself into an intelligence-gathering organization, but "it still has a long way to go," the commission said. Moreover, it said, the intelligence reorganization act leaves the bureau's relationship to the new national intelligence director, John Negroponte, "especially murky."
The legislation that created Mr. Negroponte's position was fiercely debated on Capitol Hill. In the end, even though it invested the new national intelligence director with wide powers, those powers were still not as great as those envisioned by the commission that investigated the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That panel called for a director of national intelligence who would truly deserve the title "intelligence czar," as the post is known informally in Washington, and break down resistance to change.
"The D.N.I. cannot make this work unless he takes his legal authorities over budget, programs, personnel and priorities to the limit," the commission said. "It won't be easy to provide this leadership to the intelligence components of the Defense Department, or to the C.I.A. They are some of the government's most headstrong agencies. Sooner or later, they will try to run around - or over - the D.N.I."
Mr. Negroponte, a former ambassador to the United Nations and to the new Iraq, is no stranger to the ways of Washington.
Response to the report on Capitol Hill came quickly from Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who rekindled themes from his failed presidential bid last year.
"This is much more than a wake-up call," he said in a statement. "Not only was the intelligence dead wrong about Iraq, but with growing threats in Iran and North Korea, we must take deadly seriously the commission's conclusion that we know disturbingly little about the weapons programs of hostile nations."
"We need accountability and action, immediately," he added. "The president has enormous work to do to restore the credibility of American intelligence gathering, and the administration must start catching up now."
The Silberman-Robb panel sought to avoid a condemning tone. "We have been humbled by the difficult judgments that had to be made about Iraq and its weapons programs," it said at one point. "We are humbled too by the complexity of the management and technical challenges intelligence professionals face today."
Nevertheless, the commission's findings are likely to stoke the smoldering debates over the war in Iraq, whose main rationale was supposedly to neutralize the danger from Saddam Hussein's deadly weapons. And it will also stir new talk about whether architects of the Iraq policy - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz; former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who is now secretary of state; and the former C.I.A. chief George J. Tenet - should have had to answer for mistaken assumptions.
Administration critics have said Mr. Rumsfeld should have been dismissed instead of being kept on as Pentagon chief, that Ms. Rice should not have been made secretary of state, and that Mr. Tenet should have gone into retirement without the Medal of Freedom bestowed on him by President Bush. The critics have also voiced anger over the choice of Mr. Wolfowitz to head the World Bank - a position in which he was installed today.
Despite the somber, alarming tone of the commission report, Mr. Silberman and Mr. Robb expressed optimism that improvements can be wrought. "It's a whole lot easier to instigate change when there is a major change in leadership taking place," Mr. Robb said, referring to Mr. Negroponte's nomination as national intelligence director and his approaching Senate confirmation.
"Was the war against Iraq a waste?" they were asked at a news briefing.
Mr. Silberman said that was a policy issue and "we didn't deal with policy."
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This file photo shows Terri Schiavo with her mother Mary Schindler in a photograph taken late in 2001. Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman at the center of a wrenching family feud and national right-to-die debate before her death on March 31, 2005, was shy and self-conscious as a child and hated attention, friends and relatives say. (Reuters - Handout)
Schiavo Dies Nearly Two Weeks After Removal of Feeding Tube
By WILLIAM YARDLEY and MARIA NEWMAN
PINELLAS PARK, Fla., March 31 - Terri Schiavo, the severely brain damaged Florida woman who became the subject of an intense legal and political battle that drew responses from the White House to the Halls of Congress to the Vatican, died today, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed on the order of a state court judge.
Ms. Schiavo, 41, died just before 10 a.m. today in the Pinellas Park hospice where she had lived, off and on, for several years, her husband's attorney said. But even as she slipped away, the searing emotions that surrounded her final days remained, following a national debate over whether she should have been reconnected to a tube that provided her with nourishment and hydration.
"Her husband was present by her bed, cradling her," said George Felos, Michael Schiavo's lawyer. "Mrs. Schiavo died a calm death, a peaceful death and a gentle death."
Mr. Felos went on to talk about the acrimony that continued to define the relationship between Mr. Schiavo, who has insisted that his wife would not want to live with the help of artificial means, and her parents and siblings, who fought his efforts to remove her feeding tube at every turn. The bitterness was so intense, that the two warring families could not even be in the same room with Ms. Schiavo at the same time.
"Mr. Schiavo's overriding concern here was to provide for Terri a peaceful death with dignity," Mr. Felos said about his client, who is Ms. Schiavo's legal guardian. "This death was not for the siblings, and not for the spouse and not for the parents. This was for Terri. She has a right to die peaceably, in a loving setting, and that was his overriding concern."
Mr. Schiavo, he said, had been living at the hospice here since her feeding tube was removed March 18.
David Gibbs, a lawyer for Ms. Schiavo's parents, said her brother and sister were with Ms. Schiavo until just before she died, but were told to leave just before she died.
"While they are heartsick, this is indeed a sad day for the nation, this is a sad day for the family," Mr. Gibbs said. "Their faith in God remains consistent and strong. They are absolutely convinced that God loves Terri more than they do. They believe that Terri is now ultimately at peace with God himself.
"They intend to comfort themselves with their faith and with their family at this time."
Ms. Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, came to the hospice shortly after they learned of her death and prayed at her bedside, said Brother Paul O'Donnell, a Franciscan Friar who has served as a spokesman for the parents. They left after a brief visit.
As word of her death spread through the crowd outside the hospice, some people sang hymns, others began praying.
Shortly after Ms. Schiavo died, her body was transported to the medical examiner's office, where an autopsy will be performed, at her husband's request.
Just before noon, President Bush said he was saddened to hear of Ms. Schiavo's death.
"I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life, where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected," the president said, "especially those who live at the mercy of others.
"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life."
Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, who had tried to intervene in the matter several times to keep Ms. Schiavo connected to her feeding tube, said after learning of her death that "this issue transcends politics and policies." He also called this "the toughest issue" in his tenure.
"Her experience will heighten awareness of the importance of families dealing with end-of-life issues, and that is an incredible legacy," he said. "The politics takes care of itself.
"As a society, as we live longer, it's important for us to deal with these issues. I wish I could have done more. That's the sadness in my heart."
The fight between Ms. Schiavo's husband to have his wife's feeding tube removed, and her parents, who said she could still recover if she was given proper treatment, lasted seven years and made its way from the state courts to the Supreme Court, and back again, several times. On Wednesday night, the Supreme Court refused, for the sixth time, to intervene in the matter.
The family's dispute also resulted in a new state law in Florida and an emergency session of the House of Representatives that produced a new federal law signed by President Bush in the early hours of the morning of March 21.
A range of judges consistently sided with Mr. Schiavo, but her parents would not give up, going from court to court and appealing to politicians and to people who believed that removing the tube was tantamount to taking a life.
"Not only has Mrs. Schiavo's case been given due process, but few, if any similar cases have ever been afforded this heightened level of process," Chief Judge Chris Altenbernd, of the Second Court of Appeal in Florida, wrote earlier this month.
The legal fight provoked a great national discussion, with polls showing most people did not believe politicians should be involved in personal issues of one family trying to decide whether a family member should be kept alive. But it also provoked a great outcry among an ad hoc coalition of Catholic and evangelical lobbyists, street organizers and legal advisers, some of whom demonstrated outside the hospice in recent days, and picketed outside the homes of Mr. Schiavo and Judge George W. Greer of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court, who originally ordered the tube removed.
Snippets of a video tape the Schindlers made of their daughter three years ago in which she appears to be smiling, grunting and moaning in response to her mother's voice, and to follow a balloon with her eyes, has become ingrained in the national consciousness after being replayed on news channels over and over again.
Theresa Marie Schiavo was born Dec. 3, 1963, and grew up in Huntingdon Valley, Pa. She was the oldest child of Robert and Mary Schindler, a shy, sensitive girl who loved animals, John Denver and "Starsky and Hutch." She struggled with her weight but lost more than 50 pounds in her senior year of high school.
The newly thin Terri Schindler met Michael Schiavo in her second semester at Bucks County Community College. He was her first and only boyfriend. They became engaged after five months of dating and married in 1984 in a large, formal Roman Catholic wedding ceremony.
Within two years the couple moved to St. Petersburg, Fla., where he worked as a restaurant manager and she as an insurance company clerk. The Schindlers shortly followed with their younger children, Bobby and Suzanne, and Ms. Schiavo continued her close relationship with her family while her husband worked nights. She also grew even thinner and had no luck becoming pregnant even after she consulted a fertility specialist. She weighed no more than 110 pounds on Feb. 26, 1990, the day her ordinary life changed irrevocably.
Mr. Schiavo said he heard a thud about 4 a.m. and rose from bed to find his wife collapsed on the floor. By the time paramedics arrived and resuscitated her, oxygen depletion had caused grievous brain damage. Doctors said her heart had stopped because of an undiagnosed potassium deficiency, possibly a result of bulimia. They said she had lapsed into a persistent vegetative state, meaning she could breathe on her own and had periods of wakefulness, but was incapable of thought, memory or emotion. Mr. Schiavo tried for several years to rehabilitate his wife, even taking her to California for an experimental brain treatment, but nothing worked.
He filed a malpractice suit against the obstetrician who had overseen Ms. Schiavo's fertility therapy, contending that the potassium deficiency should have been detected. In January 1993, the couple was awarded $750,000 in economic damages for her and $300,000 for loss of companionship for him.
A month later, on Valentine's Day, both the Schindlers and Mr. Schiavo say, a fight over the award signaled the beginning of their estrangement. The way Mr. Schiavo has described it, he was visiting his wife when the Schindlers walked in and Mr. Schindler asked how much money he would receive from Mr. Schiavo's part of the malpractice settlement.
The Schindlers say the fight was about what treatment their daughter's money would go toward, with the Schindlers advocating rigorous therapy and Mr. Schiavo wanting basic care. As the rift deepened, Mr. Schiavo's hopes for his wife's recovery apparently evaporated.
In 1998, Mr. Schiavo petitioned the local probate court for permission to remove his wife's feeding tube, a move the Schindlers immediately challenged.
In 2000, Judge George W. Greer of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court gave Mr. Schiavo permission to remove his wife's feeding tube after a monthlong trial in which Mr. Schiavo and two of his relatives testified that on several occasions, Ms. Schiavo had told them she would not want to be kept alive artificially.
The tube was removed twice before, but reinserted as a result of legal challenges by the Schindlers.
Last month, Judge Greer ordered that Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube be removed for the third and final time on March 18. But with her parents stepping up their fight, even President Bush and Congress tried to avert her death with an unprecedented law that let the Schindlers take their case to a federal court.
In a breathless series of events, Congress passed the measure on March 21 just after midnight, less than three days after doctors removed the tube as protesters gathered outside Ms. Schiavo's hospice. Mr. Bush, who had rushed back to Washington from his Texas ranch to sign it, did so in the middle of the night.
Its backers hoped that the law would lead a federal court to quickly order Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted, at least giving her parents more time to press their case. But one court after another turned down the parents, with the latest defeat coming Wednesday night, when the Supreme Court again refused to take up the matter.
Her parents, devout Catholics, even attracted the attention of the Vatican. Last year, they filed a motion to set aside the judge's authorization to remove the feeding tube, pointing to Pope John Paul II's statement in the spring that it was wrong to withhold food and water from people in vegetative states.
The Vatican, which typically stays out of local affairs, has recently been pointed about Ms. Schiavo. On March 21, the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said: "Who can judge the dignity and sacredness of the life of a human being, made in the image and likeness of God? Who can decide to pull the plug as if we were talking about a broken or out-of-order household appliance?"
Today, a Vatican spokesman said Ms. Schiavo's death had been caused by a "violation of the sacred nature of life."
"The circumstances of the death of Mrs. Terri Schiavo have rightly shocked consciences. A life has been interrupted," chief spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls said in a statement, according to Reuters.
"One hopes that this dramatic experience will lead to public opinion maturing to a greater understanding of human dignity, and lead to greater protection of life, including at the legal level," he said.
Abby Goodnough contributed reporting from Pinellas Park for this article.
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