When facts don't fit the opinion
By Ellen Goodman, Globe Columnist
Boston Globe, June 19, 2005

Extract:

"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.

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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 of red and blue.

The Schiavo case is not the only example. ..."

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