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
4 Comments
4 Comments:
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.
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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