Posted on 10/05/2006 3:49:28 PM PDT by wagglebee
MELBOURNE, Australia, October 5, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Patients designated as in a “persistent vegetative state (PVS)” should be used for medical experiments, according to several top bioethicists, regardless of whether or not prior consent was obtained.
Several articles published in the recent issue of the Journal of Medical debated the potential use of patients with non-responsive brain function for such medical experiments as animal organ transplants—to bypass ethic prohibitions against using a living human being for medical experimentation, some even suggested designating such patients as “dead,” saying their cognitive impairments justified treating them as cadavers.
Dr. John Shea, medical advisor to Campaign Life Coalition, told LifeSiteNews.com it would never be ethically or morally acceptable to use a living human being for medical research without their permission, regardless of their level of cognitive function.
“A person who has PVS is not dead! If you claim to respect the sacredness of human life, you can’t use a human person for medical experimentation—that would be grossly immoral.”
In fact, little is understood about the capacity for awareness and understanding of people suffering from severe cognitive impairment, Dr. Shea said. Documented cases of patients who have unexpectedly “woken up” from a supposedly permanent PVS state have refuted the argument that their condition is irreversible. (See: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jul/06070409.html)
Dr. Steven Curry of the University of Melbourne, who supports experiments using PVS patients, said it would be too difficult to convince the public that PVS patients were “dead”, according to commentary by the bioethics news watch BioEdge on Oct. 3.
Regardless, he said, their bodies should be used for medical research. Repeating a common fallacy of the bioethics debate on PVS, Curry stated that such patients will not recover. “Those who are in a PVS will not ever wake up, they feel no pain or discomfort and have no continuing interest in their own survival…”
While making the argument that PVS patients have no right to mental autonomy since they have no apparent functioning mental capacity, Dr. Curry excused the medical “use” of their bodies by suggesting such patients should be allowed to choose to donate their bodies for the good of science, saying, “…these patients must also have a right to risk that life for the common good.”
As a further basis for his argument, Dr. Curry stated that PVS patients’ inability to bear children and their lack of any capacity for movement justified the “possible confinement” caused by experimentation.
“Also,” he said, “no risk of withdrawal of consent exists.” While stating that obtaining prior agreement to experimentation would be preferable, he pointed out that such agreements would be unlikely, since few people would anticipate living in a “comatose” state for several years.
Dr. Curry would support permitting family members to give permission for a comatose relative to be used for medical experimentation, “with reference to the person’s values and stated preferences.”
Read commentary from the Australasian bioethics newsletter:
http://www.australasianbioethics.org/Newsletters/currentbioe...
See related LifeSiteNews coverage:
Man Wakes from Two-Year Coma – was Aware and Remembers Everything
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/oct/05100604.html
New study questions “brain-death” criterion for organ donation
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/sep/06091502.html
I will NEVER support a governor kevorkian. I will wait patiently for the four years to pass and maybe a real compassionate conservative will step forward to save Florida from it's death culture mentality and/or sports. (seriesly).
I see butch got a well deserved time out.
Hey, how did I miss all the good stuff!!!!!
Well, I see I missed the attacks from the usual suspects.
Probably because the snarky poster who slammed you neglected to ping you: "trigger happy."
I was wondering something similar - who are these Nazis? And don't they read the papers, about patients waking up, remembering things and about new medical developments and new medicines being developed to help? It's very sick and disturbing to hear supposed ethicists talk like this.
You know it's Friday when she's banned.
Each time you try to teach a lesson you end up getting banned.
LOL! Like clockwork!
I wish more Floridians kept up the way you do. The Republican voters made a HORRIBLE mistake in the primaries.
What an epic megafailure at humanity.
I feel partly responsible for your banning, sorry. :(
Yea, what the heck is an ethicist? I beleive it is the term used by scientists, trying to appropriate the role of religious clerics in determining what is moral, the exact opposite of the mythical situation complained of by secular scientists, that of religious clerics commenting on science.
Anyway, I wish they would go back to InPlainSight....LOL! I wonder if they ever figured out how to really lock it? Anyway, hope things are going fine over at Yahoo....never heard anything from them, but then again, that is not surprising....LOL!!!!
Now back to trying to make sense of all of these numbers.....
It's all part of the slippery slope that Roe v. Wade and the legalization of abortion in other western countries has taken us down.
Sometimes I have to wonder if we aren't in fact the infidels the the black-hearted muzzies accuse us of being.
And one more thing....there is NO WAY I am using my Live Thread Ping list, absolutely NO WAY! I will go to he!! for sure, but NO WAY!!! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The real problem is that we have accepted that there exists a small cadre of gifted bio-ethicists who, somehow, have a special sense of what travesty it is or ought to be acceptable to bring down upon the heads of the less fortunate who happen to come under their purview.
Most disciplines have well-defined guidelines for qualifications, training and practices, but I know of none that apply to this suddenly created field of "medicine."
The only clue I can perceive is that there is a need for someone to decide what society should do with those terribly inconvenient souls who have no one to speak for them and no means to speak for themselves and from that need these so-called ethicists have sprung up full-grown and full of ideas as yet untested in the arena of discourse.
Being still quite new, those who speak first and propose most will become the spokespeople for the rest without regard for how it came to pass and, through quotes and reference in periodicals, will assume the gravity of wisdom where no wisdom has been proved to hold sway.
There is nothing more pathetic than a grown man instigating a cat-fight, well, I guess the only thing more pathetic is a grown-man sucking up to grandma's.
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