Schiavo's Highest Bidder

CNN/Reuters reports that a random California businessman has offered Michael Schiavo, husband of Terri Schiavo, $1 million,

'...to relinquish his custodial rights to Terri's parents in an effort to keep the hope for Terri alive,' Herring told a Los Angeles news conference. 'After viewing video of Terri on television, I came to the belief that there was hope for her ... I have seen miraculous recoveries occur through the use of stem cells in patients suffering a variety of conditions,' Herring said.

Schiavo's case has inspired some new lows in public behavior, and offering a public bribe to encourage someone to abandon his wife has to be a watershed. But given the politics of the donor, you have to wonder whether, if these magic stem cells imagined by the donor - cells capable of generating a new brain based only on the DNA of cells long ago dead in Ms. Schiavo's brain - came from embryos, would he still be offering the money?

Update: Mr. Schiavo did not accept the prize money. This has got to be annoying to the legion of people out there who have described Mr. Schiavo's efforts as merely a matter of convenience - a description that no doubt motivated the big bribe in the first place.