Posted on 09/11/2006 8:17:41 PM PDT by aculeus
We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth? Across three continents, severely brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after taking ... a sleeping pill. And no one is more baffled than the GP who made the breakthrough. Steve Boggan witnesses these 'strange and wonderful' rebirths
For three years, Riaan Bolton has lain motionless, his eyes open but unseeing. After a devastating car crash doctors said he would never again see or speak or hear. Now his mother, Johanna, dissolves a pill in a little water on a teaspoon and forces it gently into his mouth. Within half an hour, as if a switch has been flicked in his brain, Riaan looks around his home in the South African town of Kimberley and says, "Hello." Shortly after his accident, Johanna had turned down the option of letting him die.
Three hundred miles away, Louis Viljoen, a young man who had once been cruelly described by a doctor as "a cabbage", greets me with a mischievous smile and a streetwise four-move handshake. Until he took the pill, he too was supposed to be in what doctors call a persistent vegetative state.
Across the Atlantic in the United States, George Melendez, who is also brain-damaged, has lain twitching and moaning as if in agony for years, causing his parents unbearable grief. He, too, is given this little tablet and again, it's as if a light comes on. His father asks him if he is, indeed, in pain. "No," George smiles, and his family burst into tears.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Don't blame me... I didn't COIN the term. I think it's just as ridiculous as you do.
You are definitely in the running for the Most Shrill & Hateful Person On FR.
I'm saying are you willing to pay 80% of your salary so the government can take care of people who are in a PVS indefinitely? JUST SAY YES if that's what you want.
"Family would almost certainly be likely to spring for that if it actually does something."
Cool ... since this is already few months down the road we should have good results from the private sector.
Not blaming you.
And there you have it..a compassionate Freeper who preaches the sanctity of life. IT'S SO PERFECT...and predictable.
That is ridiculous. If I want to care for a family member it would be completely my call, not yours. I would venture to guess that just figuring in the tax funds we pay to give free medical to illegals and other individuals who are capable of supporting and paying for their own care would take care of most indigent cases that come along of this nature. You on the other hand would what... create a special gas chamber we could send them to?? What? Just what is your humane answer? No pretty answer to it... starve them, suffocate them, dehydrate them. What sounds good to you?
Perhaps if we pass a law this should be done then YOU and people like you should have to work in the euthanasia centers, anyone who votes them in should have to see up close and personal what they are doing.
Can't be like Pilate and just wash your hands of the blood.
And you TerriBots wonder why nobody pays any attention to you.
That was a disgusting post.
Oh, relax; I'd say you still have a chance to win it!
Just like the use of TerriBots is a disgusting use of that young woman's name.
OF COURSE it's your call if you want to take care of your family member...but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about how much the government is responsible to pay to keep a body alive. And it's not ridiculous to ask that question.
Struck a nerve, did I?
letting them pass away (albeit through starvation, suffocation...).
Too bad we have Judges in this Country who are parading around with the likes of M Shiavo, Felos at the Euthenasia Conventions (Greer). And the Project Death in America crowd. Terrie Lives on, Many will never Forget Her.And my Nephew is alive today because my Sister did not listen to the Death Squad Doctors who paraded her PVS video to persuade them to pull his life support.
Sorry, I thought this was about a possible breakthrough in treatment of people in comas and vegatative conditions.....
What the heck is going on here?
I have been watchong Chargers/Raiders. Game was played IN OAKLAND!
First time in 25 years Oakland has been shut out!
Chargers with QB Phillip Rivers --- 27 - 0!
Yes, it was...until someone invoked the name of Terri Schiavo and all that goes along with that. That's what I replied to, not the breakthrough, which is great.
Ambien, in the US
No, it's not for me.
Your use of this young woman's name in such a disgusting way is befitting your typical behaviour on FR.
I don't mind it for me, just for her family.
You do amaze me though. For the most part I generally find a lot of what you have to say very well reasoned and intelligent.
The gutter stuff sort of destroys the mystique.
Just what the relatives say before pulling the plug. Relatives risk the inheritance if they don't. See my point.
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