Free Republic

Interesting article about the awareness of vegetative patients. We are not able to post the New Yorker's content, but check out the link. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/15/071015fa_fact_groopman?printable=true

LifeNews.com Note: Laura Echevarria is the former Director of Media Relations and a spokesperson for the National Right to Life Committee and has been a radio announcer, freelance writer active in local politics. She is a new opinion columnist for LifeNews.com. In the September 25th issue of the online magazine Salon, neurologist Robert Burton takes issue with an important—and to most people encouraging—article that appeared in the Archives of Neurology. The title of Burton’s piece suggests the direction he is headed: “The Light is On, But is Anybody Home?” The former chief of neurology at Mount Zion-UCSF Hospital and the...

Pope Rules Patients in Permanent Vegetative State May Not be Denied Artificial Nutrition and Hydration Response to certain questions raised by US Conference of Catholic Bishops concerning artificial nutrition and hydration By John-Henry Westen VATICAN CITY, September 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In most hospitals in North America, families of patients in permanent vegetative state are asked if they wish their family member to have their artificial feeding tube removed. According to a definitive ruling by the Vatican made public today, the withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration from such patients is immoral. The ruling from the Vatican's Congregation for the...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- British researchers say that scans of the brain activity of a disabled woman there show normal levels despite a diagnosis from doctors that she is supposedly in a persistent vegetative state. This is the second time the research have found normal brain activity in a PVS patient. Adrian Owen and other scientists at Cambridge University reported on Monday about the findings of their new study, which shows that researchers may be able to predict which comatose patients can recover. Owen and his team used functional magnetic resonance imaging to look at the activity in the patient's...

Two short weeks after the culmination of a legal battle between his wife and family over whether to maintain his life support, Jesse Ramirez of Arizona appears to be on the road to recovery. According to local reports, Ramirez, 36, suffered traumatic brain injury in a May 30 car accident, which put him in a coma. He had been in this minimally-conscious state for a little more than a week when doctors informed his wife that he may never recover -- and she made the decision to have his feeding and water tubes removed. Ramirez's family made a legal appeal...

CHANDLER, Arizona, June 28, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Written off by doctors as a hopeless “vegetable”, an Arizona man would not now be on his way to recovery from an accident caused by a marital quarrel if not for his family’s unrelenting struggle for his life. The Arizona Republic reports that on Wednesday, Jesse Ramirez, awoke from his nearly month long persistent vegetative state (PVS) and now “can hug and kiss, nod his head, answer yes and no questions, give a thumbs-up sign and sit in a chair.” If not for the past few weeks’ legal battles that ended Tuesday with...

Rhodes, Greece (LifeNews.com) -- A new international study finds that about forty percent of patients like Terri Schiavo who are supposedly in a persistent vegetative state are misdiagnosed and another fifty percent of them recover from their situation. The study finds the patients in question were in a minimally conscious state and could improve. The studies, conducted by researchers in Belgium, found that the level of misdiagnosis has not decreased in the last 15 years. There were presented at the European Neurological Society Meeting in Greece. Dr. Steven Laureys, from the Coma Science Group at the University of Liиge, stressed...

RHODES, June 21, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - News-Medical.net is reporting on a series of studies that show a high rate of misdiagnosis and inaccuracy in patients deemed to be in a "permanent vegetative state" (PVS). The researchers say that the problem is grounds for "extreme caution" in decisions that might "limit the life chances" of patients. The pretext of a PVS diagnosis is commonly put forward by the euthanasia movement as a reason to allow euthanasia by dehydration, as in the case of Terri Schiavo.  Researchers at the University of Liège in Belgium examined data on over 5900 patients at the intensive...

COLORADO SPRINGS, March 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A woman who spent nearly seven years in a coma, woke up for a short time Sunday and started talking. Christa Lilly, a native of Colorado Springs, relapsed into her previous unconscious state today. Lilly suffered a heart attack and then a stroke in November 2000 and was diagnosed as being in a "vegetative" state but with her eyes open. Like Florida's Terri Schindler Schiavo, she is being kept alive by a feeding and hydration tube while unconscious.    During her short period of wakefulness, Lilly spoke with CBS affiliate KKTV news reporters, saying,...

GRESHAM, Oregon October 10, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A young boy, who had previously been diagnosed as being in a “permanent vegetative state,” has awakened from a 22 month-long coma and is breathing on his own.Devon Rivers collapsed in a seizure during a phys-ed class in 2004 and his condition was never explained, though some doctors suggested it was caused by an unknown viral infection. Doctors agreed, however, that he had little hope of recovery. His mother, Carla Rivers, visited him regularly and, in addition to physical therapy by his paediatric nursing home to keep his limbs supple, she talked...

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...

Close window Published online: 23 May 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060522-9 Sleeping pills offer wake-up call to vegetative patients Drug could overcome brain shutdown caused by trauma.Michael Hopkin Clinical researchers have discovered that they can rouse semi-comatose patients by giving them, bizarrely, a common sleeping drug. If more wide-ranging tests are successful, the drug could become the first effective treatment for 'persistent vegetative state', the condition at the centre of the US legal battle over sufferer Terri Schiavo last year. British and South African doctors have reported the cases of three semi-comatose patients who were revived for several hours at a...

ROME, September 15, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new case-study raises more doubts about the ethical determination of “brain-death”, since researchers discovered that a patient suffering from a “persistent vegetative state” (PVS) demonstrated similar brain activity to healthy conscious individuals according to Zenit news. Under the leadership of neuroscientist Dr. Adrian Owen, the team of scientists from Cambridge University and the Belgian University of Liège applied MRI technology to discover that the brain activity of a PVS patient indicated she was “consciously aware of herself and her surroundings.” In their experiment, the researchers gave oral commands to a 23-year-old comatose Englishwoman,...

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? ...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...

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...

Advanced brain scanning uncovered startling signs of awareness in a woman in a vegetative state, British scientists reported Thursday — a finding that complicates one of medicine's ethical minefields. ...... Owen and colleagues contend their fMRI experiment showed the car-crash victim had some preserved conscious awareness despite her vegetative state. How could they tell? First, they checked that she could process speech. Upon being told "there was milk and sugar in the coffee," the fMRI showed brain regions reacting the same in the woman and in healthy volunteers. Then came the big test. Owen told the woman to perform a...

A severely brain-damaged woman in an unresponsive, vegetative state showed clear signs on brain imaging tests that she was aware of herself and her surroundings, researchers are reporting today, in a finding that could have far-reaching consequences for how unconscious patients are cared for and how their conditions are diagnosed. In response to commands, the patient’s brain flared with activity, lighting the same language and movement-planning regions that are active when healthy people hear the commands. Previous studies had found similar activity in partly conscious patients, who occasionally respond to commands, but never before in someone who was totally unresponsive....

LifeNews.com Note: David Reardon is the director of the Illinois-based Elliot Institute.The odds of recovery from brain injuries and vegetative states may be dramatically improved simply by restoring normal brain temperatures, according to a new medical theory published in the August issue of Medical Science Monitor.The study was inspired by the case of 53-year-old woman who suffered a heart attack and oxygen deprivation of the brain. In the course of a few days she slipped from consciousness to coma and then to a vegetative state. For the following thirty-one months she was receiving oxygen through a tube in her trachea.But...

St. Petersburg, FL (LifeNews.com) -- The family of Terri Schiavo says news about a man in a coma for 20 years who awoke from it and regained his speech and movement capabilities shows the limitations of diagnosing a permanent vegetative state. Doctors said Terry Wallis was PVS, but he was actually in a minimally conscious state similar to Terri.Like Terri Schiavo, doctors predicted that Terry Wallis would last indefinitely in this condition and not improve. However, Wallis now speaks and interacts and can count to 25 on his own. His brain has rewired itself by growing new connections from those...

Responding to reports of a drug that can temporarily revive people diagnosed in a permanent vegetative state, the foundation run by the family of Terri Schiavo is calling for a moratorium on removal of care for people in such a condition. The Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation points out South African researchers claim Zolpidem, used to treat insomnia, appears to be effective in restoring some brain function to patients previously determined to be in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS. The researchers examined the effects on three patients of using the drug for up to six years and found all "were...