so says Doctor Lina Pavanelli.

Recalling the Vatican’s medical reports during John Paul’s last days, Pavanelli writes: “I’m surprised that I myself failed to critically examine the information. I let my perceptions conform to the hope of recovery and the official version, without confronting the clinical signs that I was seeing.” While the Vatican had expressed most of its concern about breathing difficulty, which was alleviated with a tracheotomy, Pavanelli says a readily apparent loss of weight, and an apparent difficulty to swallow, was not being addressed. “The patient had died for reasons that were clearly not mentioned. Of all the problems of the complicated clinical picture of the patient, the acute respiratory insufficiency was not the principal threat to the life of the patient. The Pope was dying from another consequence of the effects on the [throat] muscles from his Parkinson’s Disease… not treated: the incapacity to swallow.”

The Vatican quickly fired back this week. John Paul’s longtime doctor Renato Buzzonetti, who now monitors Pope Benedict XVI, said that doctors and John Paul himself all acted to stave off death. “His treatment was never interrupted,” Buzzonetti told the Rome daily La Repubblica. “Anyone who says otherwise is mistaken.” He added that a permanent nasal feeding tube was inserted three days before the Pope’s death when he could no longer sufficiently ingest food or liquids. Buzzonetti did not specifically respond to Pavanelli’s claim that John Paul needed a tube weeks, not days, before he eventually died.

This could simply be an example of doctors having different opinions on procedure (when to insert the feeding tube).  Or it could be…