Tag: PVS

Nine years after her death, the “aftermath” of Terri Schiavo continues to be distorted by the New York Times

By Dave Andrusko If you didn’t follow the terribly tragedy that was the unnecessary death of Terri Schiavo, it might shock you how much misinformation, snarky commentary, and relevant facts that did not make their way into Clyde Haberman’s 1,057-word-long Sunday story, “From Private Ordeal to National Fight: The Case of Terri Schiavo.” If you …

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Widening the opening of the “window” to the brains of patients who are in a PVS or who are minimally conscious

  By Dave Andrusko   I confess my predilection for research (which grows yearly) that proves there is a lot more going on with patients who’ve suffered severe brain injuries than many “experts” have led us to believe. This is separate from misdiagnoses, which are a constant bane. We’re referring, rather, to the kind of …

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Another misdiagnosis? Man in “vegetative state” communicates he is “not in pain”

  By Dave Andrusko There was so much going on yesterday that I did not have a chance later in the day to add to a wonderful post written by our friend, Wesley J. Smith (“PVS” Patient Communicates “Not in Pain!”). And I did not want today to get past me by before commenting more …

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“PVS” Patient Communicates “Not in Pain!”

  By Wesley J. Smith These stories are worth keeping in mind: In Canada, a patient thought unconscious for ten years was found able to communicate using sophisticated brain scans. From the 2012 BBC story: “Whether a patient is in pain is an important question for physicians. But for patients in a coma, it’s a …

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“Awakening His Mind’s Eye”

By Dave Andrusko Editor’s note. While my family and I are on vacation, we are running some of our favorite NRL News Today stories from the last four months, entries from our “Roe at 40″ series, and an occasional update.  This editorial appeared in the October 2003 edition of National Right to Life News  “Their evidence …

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Dehydrated Patients May be Aware!

By Wesley j. Smith Imagine you are in a hospital or nursing home with a brain injury. Doctors say you are “not there,” but you are. And you hear doctors tell your family to stop giving you food and water! Imagine what that would feel like. And imagine the suffering that would cause! Kate Adamson, …

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Communicating with the “Unreachable”–the severely cognitively injured

By Dave Andrusko National Right to Life President and Pro-Life Perspective Host Carol Tobias today offers insight into the late bioethicist Ronald Cranford who argued that people with severe cognitive disabilities ought to be “allowed” to die. (See “The Minimally Conscious State.”) At the other end of the spectrum Nature magazine’s David Cyranoski offered an …

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New Twist in Rasouli case: ‘Vegetative’ patient now able to give ‘thumbs up’

By Alex Schadenberg, executive director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition An article concerning the Rasouli case that was written by Lisa Priest and published Wednesday in the Globe and Mail under the title: Vegetative Patient now able to give ‘thumbs up,’ fueling debate over life support. The Rasouli case is currently scheduled to be heard by the …

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Author Makes Case for Starving and Dehydrating Patients in a PVS

By Dave Andrusko Even by the standards of  the often unhinged musings found in bioethics journals, we are on an awful roll of late. Following up on something I wrote Wednesday, we have three articles today deconstructing the argument for infanticide, aka “After-birth abortion” that ran in the “Journal of Medical Ethics.” Believe me, reading …

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Lethal Conventional Wisdom on Brain-Injured Patients Constantly Changing

By Dave Andrusko Some of you may be personally familiar with this scenario.  When faced with a patient who has suffered serious brain injuries, many doctors almost reflexively conclude that the prognosis is hopelessly bleak and suggest to that the family “pull the plug.”

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Awakened by a Sleeping Pill?

By Dave Andrusko What are the odds? Two life-affirming articles from of all places NPR (see “Scientist: Fetal cells with healing properties remain in mothers for Life”) and the New York Times Magazine (“An Awakening: A mother describes the surprising effect that the pharmaceutical sleeping drug Ambien has had on her brain-damaged son” at http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/12/01/multimedia/100000001200115/ambiens-wakeful-effect.html.) …

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Lancet Study Provides More Evidence that Patients in so-called “Persistent Vegetative State” May be Consciously Aware

By Dave Andrusko In recent years a number of ingenious studies have demonstrated  that many patients in a so-called “Persistent Vegetative State” (PVS) have been misdiagnosed and that some actually in a PVS are consciously aware. More fascinating and suggestive evidence to buttress this comes from a study just published online hours ago. The authors …

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