However, the term “brain-dead” does not appear in the WaPo article, and I don’t think “irreversible brain damage” is necessarily a proxy. Otherwise, I believe that Alzheimers patients past a certain point would be considered brain-dead, and I’m virtually certain they are not.

…not one doctor ever diagnosed Terri as being ‘brain-dead.’”

Schindler said that included those physicians who wrote her autopsy report.

The Washington Post article refers to the autopsy report and the “irreversible brain damage”…what most people interpret as ‘brain-dead’.

Not to minimize the Schindler family’s loss, but they are splitting hairs in attempting to distinguish between “brain dead” and “irreversible brain damage”.

The Washington Post reported:

Terri Schiavo suffered severe, irreversible brain damage that left that organ discolored and scarred, shriveled to half its normal size, and damaged in nearly all its regions, including the one responsible for vision, according to an autopsy report released yesterday.

Although the meticulous postmortem examination could not determine the mental state of the Florida woman, who died March 31 after a judicial and legislative battle over her “right to die,” it did establish the permanence of her physical condition

Schiavo’s brain damage “was irreversible . . . no amount of treatment or rehabilitation would have reversed” it, said Jon R. Thogmartin, the pathologist in Florida’s sixth judicial district who performed the autopsy and announced his findings at a news conference in Largo, Fla…