Always wary of the political and moral implications of their results, there were the predictable claims that the results shouldn't been seen as having broad implications to other PVS patients. Of course the PVS patient par excellence, Terri Schiavo, was immediately brought up: James Bernat, a neurologist at Dartmouth Medical School, claimed, "I'm quite confident that [Schiavo] would not have responded in this way." At the same time, however, he too was taken aback: "It's a little disturbing. This suggests there may be things going on inside people's minds that we can't assess by interacting with them at the bedside."
The reason, of course, that some find this study disturbing is because they believe it would entail a different moral status, and thus medical treatment, of the PVS patient. No longer dehumanized to mere biological life, the patient might retain activity in the mind, and thus rightly be classified as a person. Even some pro-lifers make the mistake of arguing along these lines, as if this recent study vindicates the anti-euthanasia position. "See, she has a mental life, we just can't notice it through our normal five senses," so the argument would go.
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She had a connection with her daughter few understood but for those who viewed Mary Schindler interacting with Terri Schiavo the obvious was an "emotional dagger to the heart." Pamela Hennessy writes a griping article about one mother's love for her daughter and the belittling she underwent by so-called right-to-die activists who were accepted by the court as unbiased medical experts. Mrs. Schindler asked, "What harm could it do to just allow new tests?" The courts and Terri's husband said, "No!" According to a report, published September 7, 2006, a 23 year-old woman, previously diagnosed PVS, produced remarkable fMRI results when asked to imagine a game of tennis and walking around her home. The measured responses were found to be consistent with the responses of volunteers with no brain injuries or neurological insults.
Now, BBC is reporting of an extraordinary development in assessing the clinical diagnosis of persistent vegetative state.
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"Anti-euthanasia position"?!? Would that be like, "Thou shalt not kill?"