Irresponsibility in Reporting of Natasha Richardson Tragedy
I have been very unhappy about the lurid headlines in the New York Post and elsewhere about the gravely injured Natasha Richardson being "brain dead." That is not only insensitive to her devastated family, but the term is thrown around all too loosely.
Brain death is a popular term for "death by neurological criteria," in which various tests and patient history show that the brain and each of its constituent parts have ceased all functions as a brain. (It does not mean that every brain cell is nonfunctional.) It often gets conflated with a diagnoses of permanent unconsciousness--but is not the same as having a catastrophic brain injury. It is dead.
More responsible press reports have described Richardson as being in very critical condition or having suffered a devastating brain injury. No doubt that is true. And it is clear that irresponsible sources have used the term to reporters, as vulture like, they worm their way into a major celebrity story. But to call someone dead when it isn't clear that her demise has actually taken place, is not only wrong, it is cruel.
Labels: Media Irresponsibility. Brain Death. Natashia Richardson. B
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:32 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
It's an all-time low for the media not even to get the basic facts straight. They are all eager to get a "scoop," no matter how damaging it is for her family.
I've seen the term spoken right in the person's room, when the person wasn't brain-dead. I've seen an affidavit in which a doctor declared someone brain-dead "beyond all medical certainty" before even an MRI was done, and then another affidavit a week later in which he had to say the patient wasn't.
Darned right the term gets thrown around too loosely. People sign "living wills" thinking "persistent vegetative state" and "permanently unconscious" mean brain dead. People die when they didn't want to -- are murdered by removal from life support when they didn't want to be and when they are aware of what's happening -- as a result of that and other "phenomena" of the "end-of-life" culture and shibboleth.
When someone is actually brain dead, they do die no matter what.
Remember the young guy in Texas who had been in a motorcycle accident and was reported to have been declared brain dead and to have been flat-line, who woke up just as they were about to harvest his organs and informed them that he had heard everything the whole time?
I've seen someone declared in court papers to be in a coma when they weren't, even while the person was smiling whenever told that they would be getting out of the hospital soon.
You don't even want to know what I've seen happen, and what I've heard said by doctors and nurses in a patient's presence.
I've heard, "But she doesn't respond to ME" from people the patient had never seen before and didn't know or trust, and in fact feared. Including from hospital staff.
They don't really know what "pvs" and "coma" are, and how can anyone really say that someone is "permanently" unconscious? That's like saying how long someone has to live, and they themselves say they are not very good at that, at least the honest ones do.
Just heard on the news that her family removed her from life support. I hope they were given a straight story. What I've seen has destroyed the credibility of the medical profession.
Did they? I thought that they weren't going to do that until they returned her to her home state. It's a moot point, because she has died.
Very sad, especially knowing that she could have gotten help right away that would have saved her life, she and others around her just didn't respond the right way. I gues you can't force someone to go to the hospital, but it sounds like she would have been fine if she'd gone right away, it was that she waited that caused the brain hemmorage that eventually killed her.
SAFEpres: I heard on the news that she said she felt fine after the accident, and then later felt ill. I guess no one realized that she should have gone to the hospital immediately no matter how she felt.
SUSAN: I've seen a reporter stand by someone's hospital bed for a good 10 minutes, and remark spontaneously that they had seen the person's facial movements, and then report that the family member had remarked on the facial movements but not that "this reporter" had, too, and write that the patient had a ventilator tube coming out of their mouth, which they didn't, and the reporter had had all that time, at close range to see that there was no ventilator tube coming out of their mouth; the paper had said it hoped the story would help, and of course it did the opposite. If only the reporting on Natasha Richardson were a new low; if only there were no such lows.
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