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HOLLYWOOD, California, October 18, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — After Victoria Arlen spent four years in a “vegetative” state, many in the medical establishment had given up on her. Now she’s whirling across a stage competing on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.” At age 11, Arlen started showing signs of two rare disorders that caused swelling in her brain and spinal cord. But doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Untreated, she began to lose function in her legs, then her hands and arms. She couldn’t swallow and couldn’t think of the words she wanted to say. Ultimately, her body shut down...

The new research could help doctors to quickly identify patients who are aware despite appearing unresponsive and unable to communicate. Researchers from University of Cambridge in the UK have identified hidden networks in vegetative patients that could support consciousness, even when a patient appear to be unresponsive. There’s been a lot of interest lately into how much patients in vegetative states, such as comas, are aware of their surroundings. Recently, research involving functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning has shown that even patients who are unable to respond or move are able to carry out mental tasks, such as imagining...

The battle to protect patients in a so-called vegetative state from euthanasia took a positive turn today with the news that doctors have been able to communicate with one patient. A Canadian man who was believed to have been in a persistent vegetative state for more than a decade has been able to communicate with scientists that he is not in any pain. It’s the first time an uncommunicative brain-injured patient has been able to communicate. The news could change the way doctors and society views such patients. From the story: Scott Routley, 39, was asked questions while having his...

NEW DELHI: The Centre has rejected the Law Commission's recommendation to allow terminally ill patients to choose death to end their suffering, attorney general G E Vahanvati told the Supreme Court on Wednesday. ( Read: Euthanasia a sensitive issue, says govt )  Opposing an euthanasia plea on behalf of Aruna Shanbaug, who has been in a vegetative state at KEM Hospital for 37 years, Vahanvati said western parameters seldom applied to Indian conditions and culture. "We do not lead our terminally ill parents or kids to death. Who decides if one should live or die? Who knows tomorrow there might be a cure to a medical state perceived as incurable today....

This raises some interesting issues regarding how we care for those in vegetative states. A new study observed the brain of an unconscious patient responding to yes and no questions just like a normal person. Well, almost. Of 54 test subjects in the New England Journal of Medicine study, one man who was diagnosed as being in a vegetative state five years earlier actually answered yes or no questions. And did so accurately. The answers came from a brain scan conducted by an MRI machine. Answering “yes” and “no” shows activity in different parts of the brain. For instance the...

ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2009) — Scientists have found that some individuals in the vegetative and minimally conscious states, despite lacking the means of reporting awareness themselves, can learn and thereby demonstrate at least a partial consciousness. Their findings are reported in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience....This learning requires conscious awareness of the relation between stimuli -- the tone precedes and predicts the puff of air to the eye. This type of learning was not seen in the control subjects, volunteers who had been under anaesthesia.

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...

Can Ambien Wake Up PVS Patients? The Guardian gives credence to a case report concerning three patients purportedly diagnosed in PVS for more than three years who were "aroused transiently every morning after zolpidem," a sleeping pill. That would be Ambien. The report, by Clauss and Nel, of Royal Surrey County Hospital and of Family Practice of Pollack Park South Africa, was published in this month's issue of Neurorehabilitation. There are 26 million annual prescriptions for Ambien, most of which are probably not to patients in a persistent vegetative state. Recall that Ambien is oft reported to cause odd behavior...

Schiavo Autopsy Leaves Most Important Questions Unanswered For more information: Diane Coleman or Stephen Drake (708) 209-1500 exts. 11 & 29 708-420-0539 (cell) Forest Park, IL, June 15, 2005 -- Today's release of findings in the autopsy of Terri Schiavo leave the central issues in her life and death unanswered, says a national disability rights group. For example, contrary to articles stating the autopsy report "supported" the diagnosis of "persistent vegetative state (PVS)," a neuropathology expert today was careful to say that PVS is a clinical diagnosis rather than a pathological one. He added that nothing in the autopsy was...

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - A former nursing home aide imprisoned for raping a patient in a coma-like state nearly a decade ago was denied parole after he claimed he was only trying to help the woman, who later gave birth. John Horace, 60, said he thought a pregnancy could awaken the woman, known publicly as Kathy, from her coma, according to parole transcripts. "I thought that by doing this, if she came out of the coma ... she would have a normal life again," Horace said at a state Parole Board hearing earlier this month. He claimed he had read in...

Karen Ann Quinlan was the first modern icon of the right-to-die debate. The 21-year-old Quinlan collapsed at a party after swallowing alcohol and the tranquilizer Valium on April 14, 1975. Doctors saved her life, but she suffered brain damage and lapsed into a persistent vegetative state. Karen Ann Quinlan A dispute arose between the hospital officials and Karen’s parents about whether or not she should be removed from her respirator. Karen’s parents did not want to take extraordinary means to keep Karen alive; however, the hospital officials disagreed and wanted to keep her alive. The Quinlans believed that they had...

Responding to Patients in the Persistent Vegetative State Donal P. O'Mathuna, Ph.D.     {This article was published in Philosophia Christi 19.2 (Fall 1996): 55-83. This journal is a publication of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.}      Modern medicine has provided people with many great benefits, but it has also forced people to make difficult ethical decisions. One of the hardest of these is to let a loved one die when medical technology could keep him or her alive. People must now decide if and when they would want certain treatments withheld or withdrawn from themselves or others. The ethical issues involved raise questions about...

What Has Possessed George Felos, Advocate For "Mercy Killing" Terri Schiavo? Attorney Felos Has Mixed Eastern Meditation With Christianity - A Fatal Cocktail - Especially For Terri Calming the Unruly Mind By George J. Felos "A nineteenth century saint was asked, "How can one realize God?" He replied, "One must think of the Lord incessantly, like a lawyer does of his cases." Apparently, even the mystics understand how our minds become saturated with our legal work. Especially while litigating, I am amazed how my mind constantly percolates and churns the case facts, issues, witnesses, strategies, and so on. Truly incessant,...

I demand to know where the human rights and women’s rights groups are over the case of the Floridian woman Terri Schiavo. Where are her civil rights? Did she loose them the moment she could no longer audibly answer or respond for herself? Why do human rights organizations stand and give tirade after tirade to defend the war criminals at Guatanomo Bay, but where are they over a woman supposedly living in a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) and her rights? Why haven’t the women’s rights groups spoken out against Terri’s "estranged" husband, Michael, who wants to pull the feeding tube...

Disability activists call for a moratorium on the starvation and dehydration of people with disabilities. New research indicates many people being killed this way in hospitals may be alert and conscious, but unable to respond. (PRWEB) February 16, 2005 -- How much more evidence do we need? Disability Activists Call for Moratorium on Starvation and Dehydration. Disability activists have called for a nationwide moratorium on the dehydration and starvation of people alleged to be in “persistent vegetative state.” This would apply to individuals who do not have an advance directive or durable power of attorney. The call for a moratorium...

Sarah Scantlin was knocked into a coma by a drunk driver 20 years ago has begun to speak and remember her past. Her brain was injured so badly that doctors first feared she would spend her life in a vegetative state, spending years unable to form words or make any sounds other than loud cries. A week ago Sarah began speaking and doctors have no explanation. The parents, brother and sister of Terri Schindler Schiavo hope the Florida courts will see this miracle and think of Terri. Video tape shown today on CNN Headline News of Sarah with her mother...

Pope John Paul II Affirms Obligation to Feed Patients in the "Vegetative" State By Richard DoerflingerOn March 20, speaking to participants in an international congress on the "vegetative" state, Pope John Paul II profoundly changed the worldwide debate on how to respond to this condition. He issued the first clear and explicit papal statement on the obligation to provide food and water for patients in a "persistent vegetative state" (PVS). Pope John Paul II profoundly changed the worldwide debate when he issued the first clear and explicit papal statement on the obligation to provide food and water for patients in...

A woman television presenter who was critically injured in the Potters Bar train crash has made a miraculous recovery - nearly two years after doctors declared her brain-dead and said that she should be allowed to die. Relatives of Tanya Liu, a 34-year-old Taiwanese-born newsreader, say they were told by British doctors that she was in a persistent vegetative state after the crash in May 2002, which killed two of her friends and five other people, and left 76 injured. Doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in north London said that Ms Liu's injuries were so horrific that there was...

The Human Rorschach Test By Sydney Smith Published 12/04/2003 Terri Schiavo, the severely disabled Florida woman at the center of a medical and legal controversy these past months, has become something of a Rorschach test of American life and death values. For some, she's the worst-case scenario of the limits of medical technology -- snatched from the jaws of death only to be left to a fate worse than death. For others, she's the worst-case scenario of medical paternalism -- completely and totally disabled, voiceless, at the mercy of doctors and avaricious relatives, and deserving of every legal protection the...

Awareness Seen in Vegetative Patients Thursday October 30, 2003 8:06am Chicago (AP) - A small study suggests that some brain-damaged, vegetative patients may have greater awareness than doctors previously thought. The findings could have a bearing on right-to-die cases such as the one involving Terri Schiavo, who suffered severe brain damage in 1990 and is the subject of a family dispute over whether she should remain alive. The researcher who conducted the study said the results could lead to changes in how patients like Schiavo are diagnosed and treated. Other scientists call the work provocative but far from proof, and...