Posted on 03/21/2005 3:45:29 PM PST by Lorianne
Words are so easy to use. Words mean things. Words are also easily used, especially when the right words elude.
In Florida, Terri Schiavo is now waiting to die. Does she know it? You can be assured she does. Can she speak about it? No. Does that mean she is in a 'vegetative state'? No.
But what is a "vegetative state?" According to Dr. Jeffrey Frank, director of neurological and neurosurgical intensive care at the University of Chicago" [1], "A person in a vegetative state is 'awake but not aware,'... 'Though reflexes may cause them to turn toward a sound, gaze at an object or respond to touch, 'there is no thought connected ... these are primitive, instinctual responses.'" [1]
Excuse me?
That just described the vast majority of humans. Most humans do not use the short-term "conscious" process of their brain for more than a way station of information. The motor control outputted from that short-term process, if employed would dramatically reduce stress, cut down drastically on reactionary physical violence and solve a great deal of the world's problems.
The problem here is that neuroscience has not one clue what being "aware" means.
"'For all that medicine can do, we have no way of looking into another person's mind and understanding what is there,' said Dr. James Bernat, professor of neurology at Dartmouth Medical School." [1]
But that does not stop courts from depending upon that total ignorance to determine a "vegetative state."
In what other field would a court rely on "expert" testimony and opinion where the "expert" admits to not having a single clue as to how the thing they are examining works? None.
In the mean time, Terri Schiavo is suffering from a lack of motor control. Her brain is sending signals to motion but those signals are not getting through to muscle groups and that results in the inability to speak, move and control motion.
From the outside looking in, neuroscience sees no motion and declares a "vegetative state"; news organizations, with even less of a clue, declare the patient to be "brain dead" (See any recent ABC news report).
The facts are far more interesting.
Terri Schiavo is not brain dead. If she were she would be dead. Brain death is the measurement for lack of life in this country. How dare a news organization mix those words?
Terri Schiavo is not in a "vegetative state." If she were she would be on life support as a vegetable has no brain. How dare a scientist mix words to diagnose an ailment that involves motor control. She can swallow. She can eat. She can drink. She just cannot do it for herself. Under that use of words, a paraplegic should be "allowed to die" as they cannot do so either.
"Though Schiavo has become a cause celebre, her case is not unusual. Every day in hospitals and nursing homes, physicians and families struggle to understand what is going on in people who have suffered severe brain injuries: Do they feel? Do they think? Is this the way they'd want to live?" [1]
How can the questions be asked if there is no knowledge of their answers in a non brain damaged person? "Feeling" is emotional as well as physical but not one neuroscientist can tell you how it works. "Thinking" is not something you can observe from the outside and without "it" the brain would be inactive, not just motor deprived. Daring to ask the question of a person in such a condition if they would "want to live" is imposing an issue on life that better be stopped now or it will put an end to life.
Quality.
Quality of life is a variable best left alone to the person experiencing it. When a court, or a guardian or anyone else determines what the quality of life is or should be for another person, life itself is no longer the point.
Life is a binary condition. It either is, or it is not. Any use of "quality" to determine if the "is" should be "is not" is the fundamental foundation of murder.
A person who kills makes the determination for another person that their life is worth less than the person doing the killing. There is no other variable. It is not only unlawful to take another person's life, it is totally and completely illogically wrong.
Snowballing error leads to missing logic and dire results:
"... if someone is in a vegetative state for more than 12 months, medical experts agree 'there is no possibility of recovery,' said Dr. Jack Kessler, director of the clinical neuroscience research institute at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. [1]
Wow. Medical experts agree. So what? There is NO MEDICAL EXPERT WHO KNOWS WHAT THE BRAIN DOES WHEN IT IS WORKING CORRECTLY, HOW COULD THEY KNOW WHAT IT DOES NOT DO WHEN IT IS NOT WORKING CORRECTLY?
"People in a minimally conscious state give evidence of some awareness and connection with their environment. Signs are subtle but persistent over time and can include tracking a person visually, blinking in response to questions, grasping an object purposefully or moving a finger or a limb when asked." [1]
And therein lies the main cause of the problem associated with "experts" on the brain.
WYSIWYG.
If they cannot "see" something happen it therefore must not be happening. They would look at a car with a broken transmission and declare it cannot run so the motor must be scrapped.
The brain processes information and it outputs motion. When the motion is not being observed, the brain is not, not processing information. To imply that lack of motion means lack of function is scientific absurdity.
Many sides of this issue want to reduce it to one of right versus left, secular versus religious, gay marriage, abortion and anything else that can be compared to government intervention. Joan Ryan, writing in "Issues of life and death a struggle for secular society," in the San Fransisco Chronicle stated, "The case made me think about the recent court decision in San Francisco overturning the ban on gay marriage. It made me think, too, about laws governing abortion, stem cell research, assisted suicide." [2]
Ryan's problem is one most people suffer from. Reaction syndrome. Since they receive data and compare it to prior data and out comes the comparison regardless of the context or topic they wonder why someone else who cannot do so would ever be considered enjoying a quality life.
News Flash For Joan Ryan: Your reactionary writing can be cured as it is an indication of your "vegetative state" but since you have motor control you have to want to be cured or bothering with you is a waste of time. The topic is not your opinion.
Terri Schiavo is alive. She has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in this country. For a court, to rely on quackery science to determine a condition of the brain she does not have any different than most humans, is the result of neuroscience pretending to know what it does not know. Since 'experts' agree with each other it only shows the experts are equally devoid of knowledge.
"Halfway through the process of dying, a patient would lose consciousness, but courts, based on medical testimony, have found that Schiavo is already unconscious and has no awareness of what's taking place." [3]
If she were "unconscious" she would be sleeping. If she had no "awareness" of what was taking place around her, she would be a typical human.
TERRI SCHIAVO SIMPLY HAS A LACK OF MOTOR CONTROL.
So do people without limbs, in straight jackets and those who will not do what the powerful want them to do.
Welcome to the slope of societal suicide based on quackery.
Any "expert" on the brain can only admit they do not know how it works. They, therefore cannot declare how it does not work. The words they use have no meaning when the knowledge used to spew them has no clothes.
References: [1] http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/mindzxsmysteries20.htm [2] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/20/BAGIIBSA2U1.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea [3] http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/11182931.htm
http://www.terrisfight.org
About The Enticy Institute: The Enticy Institute is the future center of brain studies world wide. The Enticy Institute is where brain building will result in less suffering, and more understanding, by being able to watch an artificial life, intelligent, human-level brain, think and apply the knowledge of how the brain actually works to solving conditions of brain, detrimental to mental health.
The Enticy Institute is committed to brain health and education and is located in Phoenix, Arizona to utilize the science of Neutronics Neuromorphology in building the world's first and only, intelligent, artificial life, human-level brain android: Enticy One. The prototype, 'Little Ricci" is presented in video, image and descriptive materials at the EnticyPress.Com publications site. A computer 'game' presented is the only truly intelligent software in existence.
The Enticy Institute does not accept payment for any materials, services, information or technologies offered by it.
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bump.. excellent article.
I had a friend who was brain dead after an aneurysm at 16. He had absolutely no brain function and only was breathing through artificial means (for the few days for his one brother to make it home to say goodbye). We went to see him in the hospital before he was removed from life support. He was dead before they pulled the plug. Terry Schiavo is alive and she is being murdered.
bump
I spent 2 months working on Neurosurgery wards when I was in school. I had daily contact with patients diagnosed with PVS. (One was a guy who went out drinking with his mother. After his mother drove them home, she discovered he was no longer in the car. Ouch.)
From what I have seen and read about Terri's abilities, she seems to have way more awareness than PVS patients I've seen. For one thing she can talk and at one time could walk with bars. That's not PVS by any stretch.
That's what I would think, but we are regularly trotted out these experts who tell us that her reactions are all misleading, that patients in "PVS" can often have the reactions that she does.
Which just tells me that the condition "PVS", whatever it is, is so misleadingly-labeled as to be unscientific. If a "permanent vegetable" can talk, and react, and make noises, and laugh... then I don't care how brain damaged that person (undoubtedly) is, why the hell are we calling the person a "vegetable"?
As far as I can tell, it's only so that we can kill them with a clear conscience.
I'm just waiting for the day where other, newer "States" are discovered and defined by doctors that make people kill-able. Imagine hearing that someone is PIS, in a "Permanent Inferiority State", which has such-and-such a definition and such-and-such criteria. The person "will never come out of it", say the doctors.
Now, you look at the person and see that he seems completely healthy. Talks, walks, eats, drives a car, goes to work, plays basketball, everything. But then you are introduced to an "expert" who says "That's misleading. It's a cruel joke of nature, but patients in PIS can often have what appear to be normal lives. Don't be misled by this however. Whatever your eyes see, and your ears hear, and your heart feels, the scientific fact remains that this person is PIS."
And so, the subtext is, we can kill that person.
Now imagine that the definition of "PIS" is, oh, for example, "Jewish".
Er...assured, when she can't communicate?
"Stalker" - a successful change in the lexicon about 25 years ago by the NOW gang and other men haters that is used to vilify men in general. Pursue thy love interest is NOW always called stalking.
"Assault Weapon" - a rifle that has a automatic fire selector switch. New meaning: any rifle written about in the liberal press. Ewww an 'Assault Weapon' it sounds sooo bad!
"Hate Group" - any conservative organization or institution. ie. FreeRepublic.com . . . .
Can we add one more?
"Permanent Vegetable State" (PVS) - any 'useless eater' who should be dead or have a right to die.
There are instances of patients with severe, intractable epilepsy having one hemisphere of the brain removed--and functioning normally.
Er...assured, when she can't communicate?
Unless you count her looking directly at the person who is speaking to her, and reacting with facial expressions and even laughter (when her father made a dopey comment to her a few days ago), no she can't communicate at all.
The diagnosis PVS (permanent vegetative state) is pretty clear in the medical community. The problem we have now is that the media community is now applying it and using it for their agenda. We've seen how they change definitions to provoke emotional responses sympathetic to their goals.
Did you know that one of the doctors MS is using that declared Terri a veg is also an advocate for starving Alzheimer patient?!?The left is sicker and more insidious than I thought
I guess when she says "help me", "yes", and "no" doesn't count.
Of course not. We've all seen vegetables do that.
Mrs don-o calls it junk science, and she is looking for documented anecdotes of folks who have confounded the experts.
Sure it is, but at the same time it's also arbitrary. When a patient meets such-and-such criteria, and has for 4 weeks, they are called "persistent vegetative state". If it lasts for 1+ year, they are called "permanent vegetative state". (Of course, the media seems to use these terms interchangeably, it's all just "PVS".)
That's all fine and dandy unless this (human-defined) condition "PVS" is used to draw conclusions about whether a person can be killed.
My point is, so what if someone is "PVS"? If someone is "PVS" that just means that their disability meets the criteria that someone thought up and christened "PVS". The problem is that because the term is so biased (think about it: permanent! vegetative!), laypeople get the idea that it is, somehow, a Scientific pronouncement that the person is a Permanent Vegetable.
Which is nonsense.
Did you know that one of the doctors MS is using that declared Terri a veg is also an advocate for starving Alzheimer patient?!?The left is sicker and more insidious than I thought
And that's my point, this scientist-worship allows anyone with an agenda to define any term they like and then use it to push the envelope. As far as I can tell, if Alzheimer's were called "Permanent Tree-Stump Syndrome" (PTSS), some idiotic fraction of Americans would be pretty easily convinced that once someone is diagnosed PTSS, they can be killed. After all, who could weep for a Permanent Tree-Stump?
The term "PVS" is simply damn unscientific and prejudicial as hell. Whoever thought it up either is a moron, was not thinking clearly, or had an agenda. Terri is, there's no denying, in a severely debilitating and brain-damaged state. But if this state were merely called something neutral such as "Lizma's Syndrome" or "Condition 42A", ignorant bystanders would not be so easily fooled into thinking it's just fine and dandy to starve her to death because of it.
It's pretty easy, apparently, for ignorant observers to say "Well hey if Scientists say she's a Vegetable anyway, why not let her go?" But it doesn't roll off the tongue so easily to say "If she's in Condition 42A, let's kill her."
The term "PVS" is what needs to be put to death, the sooner the better. No scientist worth his salt should stand by the use of that term.
BTW, can she actually pronounce those words, or just come close?
Sad lol. Your right. It's unscientific and prejudicial. In defense of the medical community, I don't think it was originally used to slam or lessen these peoples existence, it was just an easy way for many decades to describe their condition. In view of how our language has changed, I think you might be right.
The bottom line is science is clueless when it comes to how much are these people are aware of their surroundings and most that have come out of their "coma" state they were very attuned to what was going on. That's more than enough to have me believing there is a major chance this is nothing more than murder.
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