There are two books coming out soon about the Terry Schiavo case and so I want to tell how I happen to know one of the 'figures' in the Terry Schiavo case. I was watching This Week with George Stephanapolas on the TV and the conservative commentator, William Crystal of the Weekly World ... something or other ... it doesn't matter, nobody reads it anyways except probably William Crystal. Anyways, Crystal said that the Doctor in this case who testified for the husband was: 'Ronald Cranford who's from Minneapolis and does a lot of these'.
Hey! I know him! Or did a couple of years back. I tuned my ears up then for what Crystal would say next about Dr. Cranford, expecting that Crystal would add more about Dr. Cranford than just the fact that he did a lot of testifying, like Dr. Cranford was obviously doing it for the money, or that he was a fanatic of the Dr. Kevorkian ilk or was some sort of egotistical glory hound or- I don't know - was an organ thief who sells human bodyparts to China. (By the way, Ronald Cranford has never denied that last accusation). Maybe that was all there was: Dr. Cranford testified on the wrong side more than once. And that was bad enough.
Oh, and speaking of 'doing it for the money': Wasn't William Crystal getting paid to give his opinion that somebody else was doing it for the money. Little hypocritical, don't you think, Bill?
I met Dr. Cranford when I was working at the desk of the Physician'sIncomplete Room at the Hennepin County Medical Center. I'd just started working there when Dr. Cranford came in to sign some records. He introduced himself to me, the new guy, and then mentioned that many people thought he looked like Gene Hackman and what did I think? My reply was that I supposed that I could see the resemblance, but Gene Hackman wasa lot thinner than he was and had more hair on the top of his head.
I might have gotten on his bad side at that point.
He really didn't look much like Gene Hackman, actually, I was saying that to be nice. He looked more like Buddy Hackett, if you can imagine a thinner Buddy Hackett with not so much hair - and living. The chief resemblance between the two was that Dr. Cranford had the habit of talking out of the side of his mouth when he was making wise-cracks like Buddy Hackett used to. Dr. Cranford was one of the more friendly doctors at the hospital. To start with: he actually talked with us. Often he would come in and tell jokes with that being his only purpose for visiting us. Like the other Doctors, he was always busy but he had enough time to be personable. By the way, this might be just a Minnesota thing, but the vast majority of the Doctors at that hospital were very nice indeed and not at all the God-complexed jerks that Doctors are supposed to have a reputation for. They were politer than the general public, as a rule.
So, I would talk with him occasionally and I found out that he was somewhat known nationally and had been on Oprah more than once. (Oprah's a nice lady, he says). He had been earlier involved, maybe a decade earlier in a famous 'right to die' case. I think it might have even been the Karen Quinlan one. "They don't like me here," he told me, referring to the hospital, "I'm too controversial."
I believe he might have been an atheist who viewed consciousness and personality as the 'ghost in the machine', the machine, of course, being the human brain and the ghost being our self awareness. I'd asked him once what he thought about Near Death Experiences, him being a neurologist and all he must know something about it. He told me thatit was all made up that there was an industry being built on what was nothing more than hallucinations. (I beg to differ, but I'll get into that later).
Here's the question that William Crystal failed to address about Dr. Cranford's participation in cases like Terry Schiavo's: Why does he do it? My guess - I don't know for sure - is that it's because he took an oath not to prolong suffering. The Hippocratic oath says something about that, I'm pretty sure. Doesn't it? I think it also makes you swear your oath by the God Apollo.
Anyways, regarding our conversation about near death experiences, what I should have said to Dr. Cranford was that near death experiences had, in fact, been investigated and that at least one medical doctor, Dr. Raymond Moody, had written a book about it (Life after Life) and come to the exact opposite conclusion, which was that near death experiences were indeed more than hallucinations. In his book, Dr. Moody, related numerous instances where patients relayed accurate information aboutthings outside of their hospital room that they would have no possible way of knowing. What I should have then asked Dr. Cranford was where's his book and where's his thorough investigation? Huh?
But, you know, that's one of those clever, devastating rebuttals that youcan only come up with, like, a couple years later. This evidence is what's called 'anecdotal', that is someone says it happens to them and that sort of evidence doesn't count. Unless of course you're on death row awaiting your execution, as hundreds of condemned men know personally. Then, of course, it's golden. Can someone please explain to me how the same type and sort of evidence that's good to end a man's life (a couple of women, too) is still not good enough for science?
Just because something hasn't happened in a laboratory, with control groups and then been repeated, it doesn't mean that it hasn't happened. Most everything happens outside of the lab. The same thing with stuff that falls out of your particular philosophy: Just because you don't believe it can't happen or doesn't exist doesn't in the least affect whether it really has or does. Reality is not something you can vote on. It exists entirely outside of the democratic process.Ok. Here's another devastating rebuttal I should have used on Dr. Cranford. When he told me that near death experiences were nothing but hallucinationsI should have looked him straight in the eye and said: "Then prove to me that you're not an hallucination."
Zing! That would have shot him right down. Because how could he?
You know, I just realized that almost nobody who's reading this would actually ever know who really said what or when, so ... yeah, I did say that stuff to Dr. Cranford. Not only did I say it, but he was absolutely dumbfounded and his only reply was to bow his head respectfully and say to me: "You're a much smarter man than I am, Mr. Sommers. I am hanging up my stethoscope, posthaste, and will give up the practice of medicine. Entirely."
Alright, that's not what happened. He's still practicing medicine and probably thinks he's as right in all of his opinions now as he did then. I do think the guy had a tendency to exaggerate, though, as in: "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story." For example, he golfed a lot and claimed that over his lifetime he'd gotten four holes-in-one.
Forgive me if I'm wrong in this, but most professional golfers never get that many in their career. How does he do it?
Someone should tell him that miniature golf doesn't count.
No comments:
Post a Comment