Politics
Friday September 8, 2006
See today's LifeSiteNews stories
“Vegetative” Patient Shows Conscious Awareness
Confirmed beyond any doubt she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings
by Hilary White
CAMBRIDGE, September 8, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – More and more, ethicists and doctors are questioning the diagnosis of “persistent vegetative state,” and new research is opening the discussion. Researchers working at Cambridge University in England reported in a study published in the journal Science that a woman who was described as being in a “vegetative state” is showing signs of conscious awareness while remaining in the comatose condition.
The study, led by Dr. Adrian Owen at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge, compared neurological responses to verbal stimuli in the comatose patient with those of conscious volunteers. It showed that the patient’s brain responded to commands in the same brain centres and in the same way normally associated with consciousness such as language and planning regions.
“If you put her scans together with the other 12 volunteers tested you cannot tell which is the patient’s,” Owen told The New York Times.
“I was absolutely stunned” by the results, Owen said.
The researchers asked the woman to imagine playing tennis, or walking through her house, they saw peaks in the premotor and other areas of her brain that mimicked those of healthy volunteers
He commented that the results, “confirm that, despite the diagnosis of vegetative state, this patient retained the ability to understand spoken commands and to respond to them through her brain activity, rather than through speech or movement.”
“Her decision to work with us by imagining particular tasks when asked represents a clear act of intent, which confirmed beyond any doubt that she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings,” Owen added.
The diagnosis of PVS has been under scrutiny among doctors and disability rights groups recently because of its vagueness and the distressing tendency of patients in the condition to wake up unexpectedly. The discovery has had broad media exposure and many are speculating that the new research will alter the way PVS patients are treated and the understanding of the unconscious condition itself.
Dr. Owen said, “It also tells us that she is able to perform simple tasks in her head, such as imagining certain scenarios. We see this as a proof of principle: we have found a way to show that a patient is aware when existing clinical methods have been unable to provide that information.”
The PVS diagnosis has been especially criticized since the court ordered dehydration death of Terri Schindler Schiavo. PVS and its related diagnosis, a “minimally conscious state” (MCS), is commonly used to justify the removal of artificial nutrition and hydration and has added fuel to the euthanasia and assisted suicide movement.
In 2005, because of growing concerns about inaccurate diagnosis, the disability rights organization, Not Dead Yet, called for a moratorium on the removal of artificial nutrition and hydration based on a PVS diagnosis.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Disability Activists Call for Moratorium on Starvation and Dehydration
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/feb/05021704.html
Coma Recovery After 19 Years Poses Questions About Terri Schiavo
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jul/06070409.html
Back to TopSHARE THIS STORY: E-mail Print Newsvine Digg Reddit Del.icio.us Facebook
Latest Headlines
- Abortion-Politician-Communion Scandal Shows Real Lack of Pastoral Concern - Editorial
- "Women Should Have the Right to Choose" says Head of UK Parliamentary Pro-Life Group
- British MPs Defeat all Pro-Life Provisions in the HFE Bill
- No Comment from Bishops as Cherie, wife for Former PM Blair, Touts Catholicism While Extolling Contraception
- Archbishop Chaput to Obama Catholics: If You're Serious Catholics, You'll Be Serious About Making Your Candidate Pro-Life, Not Editing My Words
- F.D.A. Delays Human Trials of Embyonic Stem Cell Research Treatment
- Abortion Most Prevalent Among Women Aged 20 to 24 – Statistics Canada
- MP Calls Canadian Government Defense of Human Rights Subsection 13(1) "absolutely shocking"
- Late Term Aborted Babies in UK Left to "Gasp for Breath" Until Death
- French Government Seeks "Universal Decriminalization" of Sodomy
Most Read this Week
- Texas Pastor Resigns After Involvement in Gay Porn Site Exposed
- Late Term Aborted Babies in UK Left to "Gasp for Breath" Until Death
- Governor Schwarzenegger Vows to Fight Reinstatement of Traditional Marriage
- California Supreme Court Imposes Homosexual 'Marriage' on State
- Anglican Acceptance of both Abortion and Sanctity of Life will Allow the Creation of a Gay Church: Gene Robinson
- Ontario Forces Taxpayers to Pay for “Sex-Change” Operations
- Pro-Abortion Expression Permitted, Pro-Life Forbidden on Campus at Australia University
- State Funded Homosexual Youth Event Encourages Children to Display Homosexual Acts
- California Supreme Court Asked to Stay "Gay Marriage" Order until November Public Ballot
- Analysis: Ontario Human Rights Code Being Used to Beat Christianity out of the Public Square
MORE NEWS: 
LifeSiteNews.com Home Page Last 10 Days Archives Special Reports
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any Internet re-publishing of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews that have come from other news sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.