A Little More Humility About PVS, If You Please
Whilst we are contemplating what it means that a woman diagnosed as PVS is actually cognitive, as determined by MRI tests, let us not forget this very interesting development from a few months ago. Remember, when Ambien apparently aroused three PVS patients in S. Africa, permitting them to interact so long as the drug's effect lasted?
I have no idea how all of this will turn out. But this much I do know: What we don't know about cognitive disabilities should make doctors and bioethicists a little more humble and definitely more reluctant to deprive these helpless people of food and water.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:31 PM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
Terri Schindler Schiavo should not be lumped with PVS cases since vegetables can't laugh, or cry, or to the limits of her injured abilities, talk. In the minutes before her natural food and natural water delivered by a natural gravity feeding tube was sliced from her belly, she was asked to just say, "I want to live." First in a low voice she complied with the request, but knowing that would not be sufficient, she screamed for her life loud enough to be heard outside her hospice room in the hallway. Continue research that leads to proper rehabilitation of those who seem to be in a persistent vegetative state; and continue research into the judicial corruption at the heart of the state sanctioned murder of Ms. Schiavo.
Well, I don't like the term "vegetable" at all, since it demeans and dehumanizes. I consider it on a par with the N word, since that despicable word seeks to do the same thing. Moreover, persistent vegetative state is the only medical diagnosis of which I am aware that contains a pejorative. As far as I am concerned, no human being is a carrot or a cucumber.
Second: If she were unconscious, it wouldn't matter to me with regard to the morality and ethics of this matter.
Third: My understanding is that she wasn't able to talk. The people who I know in the room tell me they believe she would react, and verbalize in the sense of making noises, but not words.
But as I said, it doesn't matter to me.
Not to belabor this, true, Terri could not carry on conversation. But according to Tom Broderson, business manager for attorney Pat Anderson (they have recently married), he taught her to speak a few words. Her health care providers also reported her ability to form a couple of words. And Barbara Weller, lawyer and assistant to attorney David Gibbs, minutes before the feeding tube was removed, she said to Terri, "If you could just tell us you want to live, this would all be over today." I have a video of Ms. Weller reporting what happened after she and others were thrown out (Weller's words) of Terri's room. Terri could not fully form the word, "...want," or continue to the word, "...live," but in the moment of being asked to try, there was a direct and deliberate response. From multiple accounts, lay people, caregivers, family, and experts -- Terri Schindler Schiavo was an aware of self person worthy of God's gift of life. How do I share this Quicktime movie clip, myself, another reporter, and a bystander talking to Barbara Weller moments after she emerged from Terri's hospice room?
If you have a URL, tell us what it is and people can go take a look. Of, if one of the other WEB sites that focus still on Terri's case wanted to upload it, people could take a look that way.
Frankly, I am computer ignorant. It's all I can do to manage this blog.
This thread is very interesting. First, the case of the brain pattern equivalence clearly suggests an aware person unable to communicate. Trodding rough shod on this, on the other humans watching us, is not just crass, it is wicked. Raising a hand against the sacred is not just oops a mistake. The blood cries out against the dullard nonchalance and certainly there will be an accounting as a society and as individuals for breeding contempt for life. As the Proverbs say, those who close their ears to the cry of the poor will themselves cry out and not be answered. What John Sipos recounts indicates awareness by Schiavo of her impending execution which she was not able to resist in her impoverished condition. Blood is now on the nation and its conscience for this case as for others, the distress of the child in the womb when the suction begins, etc. Keen listening with compassion to the other, to the weak, is becoming so rare. To Wesley Smith's great credit he is faithfully reporting and advocating for the weak and those targetted for victimization.
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Our country and much of the especially western world is in a declining and aging in population. Who will pay into Social Security and care, hands on, for the disabled and elderly as myself now at 71?
Contraception leads to abortion resulting in assisted suicide, the open door To (in)voluntary euthanasia as in Nazi Germany......doctors in hospital using ideas from the US to euthanize the disableD "useless eaters" and occupiers of beds needed by others......bringing on the full scale genecide of Auschwitz!
We are headed if not there already.....Terri being the Roe of euthanasia, a test and president case for "terminally ill" which she clearly was not, and assisted feeding legally redefined as "artificial life support" by Felos, King, Rice et al in '98 and '99.....which of course, also is not, especially after repeated and specific statements from the Vatican in the months before Terri's grisly execution, Terri and her family being devout Catholics!
God have mercy!
But what goes around, comes around......their turn is coming.....Satan and the evil spirits are real but God is provident.......read Psalms Fourth Bood (90 to 106)
JUSTICE WILL COME FOR TERRI AND CHANGES TO INSURE THE PROTECTION OF THE WEAK AND VULNERABLE AMONG US, WHO BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD MIGHT BE........YOU OR I!
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