‘Stop dehydration deaths,’ says Terri Schiavo’s brother in response to new brain scan

St. Petersburg, Fla., Feb 4, 2010 / 08:32 pm (CNA).- Reacting to news of a breakthrough in brain scanning technology, Terri Schiavo's brother Bobby Schindler is calling for a halt to removing hydration from brain-damaged patients who are thought to be in a persistent vegetative state. An “unscientific, inaccurate” diagnosis of unresponsive patients is being used as “a criterion to kill,” Schindler charged.

Schindler was responding to news that researchers from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the University of Liège have used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map a patient’s brain activity while he was asked to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions.

One patient, a 29-year-old man who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in a traffic accident, was able to communicate by willfully changing his brain activity, a press release from the MRC reports. He correctly answered questions such as “Is your father’s name Alexander?”

Dr. Adrian Owen and his team at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England were the developers of the technique.

“We were astonished when we saw the results of the patient’s scan and that he was able to correctly answer the questions that were asked by simply changing his thoughts,” Dr. Owen commented. “Not only did these scans tell us that the patient was not in a vegetative state but, more importantly, for the first time in five years, it provided the patient with a way of communicating his thoughts to the outside world.”

Dr. Steven Laureys of the University of Liège, a co-author of the study, said the scans were the only viable method for the patient to communicate since his accident.

“It’s early days, but in the future we hope to develop this technique to allow some patients to express their feelings and thoughts, control their environment and increase their quality of life.”

The three-year study conducted fMRI scans on 23 patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. The technology detected signs of awareness in four of the cases, 17 percent of the participants.

The fMRI technique can decipher the brain’s answers to questions in healthy participants with 100 percent accuracy but has previously not been used for a patient who cannot move or speak.

Dr. Martin Monti, another MRC co-author of the study, said the advance could help with clinical questions and would allow patients to say if they are feeling any pain.

Dr. Allan Ropper, a neurologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, wrote an editorial accompanying the study. According to HealthDay News, he said that people are going to have to “grapple” with the meaning of brain scans that show consciousness or residual consciousness.

“It has to do with what you think life is and what is a meaningful life. Those are social, cultural and theological questions,” he said.

He also cautioned against giving false hope to families, noting the small percentage of the responsive patients. All the study’s patients had suffered traumatic brain injuries, not damage from oxygen deprivation.

Speaking of the 29-year-old patient, Monti said “it is still the case that we managed to give him, to a little extent, a voice. In a sense there was a very positive outcome. We managed to interact. This is an extremely exciting thing."

CNA sought comment on the issue from Bobby Schindler of the Terri Schiavo Foundation.

His sister Terri, who was severely brain damaged from oxygen deprivation, was at the center of a 2005 legal dispute in Florida. She was denied nutrition and hydration by court order in a case between her blood relatives and her husband.

Schindler said the study backs other findings about the “unscientific, inaccurate” diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state (PVS) and shows how it is “often” wrong when diagnosing people with severe injuries.

“As in the case of my sister, they’re using this diagnosis as a criterion to kill.”

Schindler said his family had asked a judge for similar testing for Terri but it was denied.

If the technique was easy to conduct and available, he said, it would have given a better understanding of her condition. “Why not ask, especially when it is going to end someone’s life?”

Asked whether the case offers insight into how unresponsive patients should be treated, he replied:

“Nobody should have to earn the right to hydration. We should do everything we can to care for these people, regardless of how responsive or unresponsive they are.”

Schindler lamented that people are being “indoctrinated” to see killing as “an act of compassion.”

“They should stop any further dehydration deaths, because we’re learning how inaccurate the PVS diagnosis is.”

Discussing the other patients who could not communicate, he said families of unresponsive patients should continue to treat them with “love and compassion.”

But the patient’s condition should never justify removing food, hydration or “basic care,” he stressed.

Schindler also noted that improvements on science are possible and could improve unresponsive patients’ functioning.

“We should never come to the conclusion that someone is better off starving to death,” he told CNA.

He was critical of news reports that claimed the new technology would not have helped Terri Schiavo, saying some stories were written “as if these doctors want to go out of their way to justify Terri’s death.”

“If you read these articles, it seems they always have this caveat: ‘let’s not jump to conclusions with Terri Schiavo and say these tests would have proven she wasn’t in the conditions the doctors said she was in.’”

Schindler told CNA that more doctors were on record saying that Terri could have been helped with some of the technology available. They believed that she wasn’t in a vegetative state.

He also advocated the elimination of the term “vegetative state” from common use, saying it is “dehumanizing” and devalues the person and his or her “inherent moral worth.” In his view, PVS diagnosis should also not be used as a criterion for ending someone’s life because of how often it is wrong.

Schindler said he describes unresponsive patients as “persons with brain injuries.”

“I don’t know why I have to label them as being a vegetable. I think it leads to an existing prejudice against these types of people,” he told CNA.

A glimpse of what we have to look forward to if Obamacare passes.

Thread by combat_boots.

Repost: Cass Sunstein Advocates for Removal of People's Organs Without Explicit Consent

Oldie but goodie from 9/4/09

For the last couple of weeks we have been blasting Cass Sunstein on this blog. Many of you have also picked up the sword and begun fighting this Obama appointment as well.

Now, we need to really stand up. The Senate will be coming back into session next week and Harry Reid has already mentioned that he wants to make confirming Sunstein one of his first priorities. We CANNOT let this happen.

Check out this story today on Sunstein from Matt Cover at CNS News. If this doesn't make you pick up a phone and call your Senator, I don't know what will. We need to be blasting this information to all corners of the internet.

PLEASE WRITE TO YOUR SENATOR NOW TO STOP CASS SUNSTEIN. http://www.capwiz.com/libertyleaders/issues/alert/?alertid=13971556&type=ML

Here is the story from Mr. Cover at CNS News titled OBAMA REGULATION CZAR ADVOCATED REMOVING PEOPLE'S ORGANS WITHOUT EXPLICIT CONSENT:

Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would “presume” someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken.

Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done.

Outlined in the 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler argued that the main reason that more people do not donate their organs is because they are required to choose donation.

Sunstein and Thaler pointed out that doctors often must ask the deceased’s family members whether or not their dead relative would have wanted to donate his organs. These family members usually err on the side of caution and refuse to donate their loved one’s organs. “The major obstacle to increasing [organ] donations is the need to get the consent of surviving family members,” said Sunstein and Thaler.

This problem could be remedied if governments changed the laws for organ donation, they said. Currently, unless a patient has explicitly chosen to be an organ donor, either on his driver’s license or with a donor card, the doctors assume that the person did not want to donate and therefore do not harvest his organs. Thaler and Sunstein called this “explicit consent.”

They argued that this could be remedied if government turned the law around and assumed that, unless people explicitly choose not to, then they want to donate their organs – a doctrine they call “presumed consent.”

“Presumed consent preserves freedom of choice, but it is different from explicit consent because it shifts the default rule. Under this policy, all citizens would be presumed to be consenting donors, but they would have the opportunity to register their unwillingness to donate,” they explained.

The difference between explicit and presumed consent is that under presumed consent, many more people “choose” to be organ donors. Sunstein and Thaler noted that in a 2003 study only 42 percent of people actively chose to be organ donors, while only 18 percent actively opted out when their consent was presumed.

In cases where the deceased’s wishes are unclear, Sunstein and Thaler argued that a “presumed consent” system would make it easier for doctors to convince families to donate their loved one’s organs.

Citing a 2006 study, Thaler and Sunstein wrote: “The next of kin can be approached quite differently when the decedent’s silence is presumed to indicate a decision to donate rather than when it is presumed to indicate a decision not to donate. This shift may make it easier for the family to accept organ donation.”

The problem of the deceased’s family is only one issue, Sunstein and Thaler said, admitting that turning the idea of choice on its head will invariably run into major political problems, but these are problems they say the government can solve through a system of “mandated choice.”

“Another [problem] is that it is a hard sell politically,” wrote Sunstein and Thaler. “More than a few people object to the idea of ‘presuming’ anything when it comes to such a sensitive matter. For these reasons we think that the best choice architecture for organ donations is mandated choice.”

Mandated choice is a process where government forces you to make a decision – in this case, whether to opt out of being an organ donor to get something you need, such as a driver’s license.

“With mandated choice, renewal of your driver’s license would be accompanied by a requirement that you check a box stating your organ donation preferences,” the authors stated. “Your application would not be accepted unless you had checked one of the boxes.”

To ensure that people’s decisions align with the government policy of more organ donors, Sunstein and Thaler counseled that governments should follow the state of Illinois’ example and try to influence people by making organ donation seem popular.

“First, the state stresses the importance of the overall problem (97,000 people [in Illinois] on the waiting list and then brings the problem home, literally (4,700 in Illinois),” they wrote.

“Second, social norms are directly brought into play in a way that build on the power of social influences [peer pressure]: ‘87 percent of adults in Illinois feel that registering as an organ donor is the right thing to do’ and ’60 percent of adults in Illinois are registered,’” they added.

Sunstein and Thaler reminded policymakers that people will generally do what they think others are doing and what they believe others think is right. These presumptions, which almost everyone has, act as powerful factors as policymakers seek to design choices.

“Recall that people like to do what most people think is right to do; recall too that people like to do what most people actually do,” they wrote. “The state is enlisting existing norms in the direction of lifestyle choices.”

Thaler and Sunstein believed that this and other policies are necessary because people don’t really make the best decisions.

“The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made [for them] by someone else,” they said.

This means that government “incentives and nudges” should replace “requirements and bans,” they argued.

Neither Sunstein nor Thaler currently are commenting on their book, a spokesman for the publisher, Penguin Group, told CNSNews.com.

In a question-and-answer section on the Amazon.com Web site, Thaler and Sunstein answered a few questions about their book.

When asked what the title “Nudge” means and why people need to be nudged, the authors stated: “By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front.

“We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gently nudging them in directions that will make their lives better,” they wrote.

“…The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food,” said Thaler and Sunstein. “Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot. …”

40 Days for Life will become more important than ever if Obamacare passes.

Thread by me.

Meet Two Babies Saved from Abortion

March 16, 2010 (40DaysforLife.com) - Over the last few days, I was on a whirlwind tour of Southern California -- from Fresno down to San Diego. In addition to speaking at two pregnancy center banquets, I was able to visit numerous 40 Days for Life sites and meet for dinner with several dozen local 40 Days for Life campaign leaders. It was a very hope-filled trip!

I brought along my pocket camcorder and shot footage all along the way -- and just posted a highlight video online for you here.

During the short video, you will see:

- Photos of two baby boys saved during a previous 40 Days for Life campaign who were born a week ago - on the same day ...

- A 40 Days for Life location where 22 babies have been saved and the abortionist resigned ...

- A small group of faithful volunteers who had two women change their minds and choose life shortly after I left their vigil site ...

- A campaign that has seen 7 lives saved thus far ...

- And much, much more!

As you can see, there are miracles taking place in many, many places were people are joining together to pray and fast for an end to abortion.

As they pray outside the abortion centers, people are beginning to understand that the woman who seeks an abortion is often a woman who has simply run out of hope.

One such woman saw people praying at the 40 Days for Life vigil recently in Indianapolis, Indiana. She got out of her car, walked up to them at a rapid pace ... then hugged one of the vigil participants and started to cry.

This prayer volunteer -- Kathy -- called Eileen, the local coordinator, for help. At Eileen's suggestion, Kathy then handed her phone to the sobbing woman.

"She then started telling me that she had done something terrible," Eileen said, "and that the father of the baby -- her daughter's boyfriend -- told her that she must get an abortion."

Eileen told her that if she did, she would feel even worse and would regret it forever. "I tried to encourage her that at this point," she said. "She could still do the right thing -- the thing her heart was telling her to do -- and that God would take care of her and the baby."

After lunch with Kathy, the woman went home. She called Kathy later to thank her -- and to say she was not going to abort her twins!

"I have never met a woman who WANTED to have an abortion," said Eileen.

The volunteers didn't know it at the time, but this woman had sat alone in her car outside of Planned Parenthood for two hours -- crying.

When Kathy drove up, the woman saw a sign on Kathy's car that said, "Pregnant? Need help?"

"It gave her hope," said Eileen. "She jumped out of her car to run to Kathy for help. We never know what God will use to reach out to us."

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Repost: Cass Sunstein Advocates for Removal of People's Organs Without Explicit Consent

Stem Cells Help British Boy Grow New Windpipe

Meet Two Babies Saved from Abortion