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Joseph Fins, MD, Chief of the Medical Ethics Division of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Hospital, in an interview with The New York Times for a Mar. 25, 2005 article entitled "Neither 'Starvation' Nor the Suffering It Connotes Applies to Schiavo, Doctors Say," commented:

“The window of opportunity to be diagnosed as even minimally conscious closes within three months of oxygen-deprivation brain damage…

Based on evidence accepted by the courts that Ms. Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state and not in a more conscious state…the part of brain that allows one to suffer is not functioning…and that should be reassuring to people who are concerned.”

Mar. 25, 2005