Comments from Cheryl Ford, RN

Comments from Cheryl Ford RN

"Thousands of brain-damaged people who are treated as if they are almost completely unaware may in fact hear and register what is going on around them but be unable to respond, a new brain-imaging study suggests."

This is an interesting article, but hardly enlightening since many experts in the medical profession have been trying to convince the bioethicists, pro death attorneys and family members for years, that brain injured people are aware of their surroundings. Dr. Fin's declaration of his new found enlightenment seems hollow in light of the fact that the bioethics community has been, for many years, desperately trying to establish and declare their expertise in determining when and how someone should die....primarily based on their declaration of a patient's "persistent vegetative state."

Where has Dr. Fin been hiding out? Many bioethicists, lay people with a self-proclaimed expertise in the demographics of what the American people want, and pro-euthanasia attorneys and lawmakers find this information "enlightening" because they have been voicing their opinions about a subject matter beyond the realm of their expertise. They have, likewise, resisted any attempt to extricate them from the power that they have gained through discussing these topics as if they were experts.

For years, patient advocates like Chris Borthwick, and world-reknown medical experts like William M. Hammesfahr MD, and William S. Maxfield, MD, have been adamantly teaching the danger of assuming that a neurologist or an attorney can, with a cursory bedside examination, determine whether a patient is "minimally conscious" or in a "persistent vegetative state." That is the very reason the diagnosis of PVS has a misdiagnosis rate of over 30% and many people actually recover from what this article describes as "very little chance of recovery." As Dr. Fin so poignantly states, "...they were there all the time." I wonder what the bioethics community would declare, if Terri's estranged husband manages to kill her, and they then discover, "...She was there all the time."


What this article is describing that is worth celebrating is the first indication that someday we may be able to visualize and diagnose what is known today as a "locked-in state." Here is a quote from the veritable "Bible" of the bioethicists, the 1994 Consensus Statement of the Multi-Society Task Force :


"By definition, patients in a persistent vegetative state are unaware of themselves or their environment. They are noncognitive, nonsentient, and incapable of conscious experience. There is, however, a biological limitation to the certainty of this definition, since we can only infer the presence or absence of consciousness in another person....an error might occur if a patient in a locked-in state...was wrongly judged to be unaware. Thus, it is theoretically possible that a patient who appears to be in a persistent vegetative state retains awareness but shows no evidence of it."


It would seem that this statement alone would make suspect the notion that an MRI could become a powerful tool in helping decide whether someone had lost awareness, or not. The article seems to imply a heretofore unseen measure of activity...not a lack thereof. Maybe what gives Dr. Fin "goose bumps" is the notion that one day an attorney or bioethicist can hold an MRI up to the light and say, "This person should be rehabilitated (highly unlikely) or, this person should be starved and dehydrated to death because I can see that they are totally unaware."

Using Terri as an example, Dr. Ronald Cranford, MD, an extensively credentialed leader in bioethics, viewed Terri's CT scan in 02, and declared that she had little or no cerebral cortex in her head, and it was mostly filled with cerebrospinal fluid. On the other hand, Dr. William Maxfield, MD, not a bioethicist by trade (however he does serve as a member of the ethics task force in hyperbaric medicine) but rather a world - renown specialist in radiology and nuclear medicine who assisted in the invention and development of many of the imaging techniques in use today.

He is board certified in 3 different specialties and has held faculty positions and chairmanships at the US Navy Medical School in Bethesda, Johns Hopkins Medical School, the Oschner Clinic and Foundation Hospital in New Orleans, Tulane University School of Medicine, and the LSU School of Medicine.

What was his interpretation of Terri's CT scans?

He testified that Terri has brain tissue in all the major structures of her brain. Terri's most severe damage is in her occipital region and probably her eyesight is affected the most. It is possible for her to retain memories, as she still has tissue in that part of her brain. And finally, he detects a change FOR THE BETTER between her 96 and her 2002 CT scans, which he attributes to the body's natural tendency to heal itself. Can brain tissue regenerate? YES!

Always keep in mind, once we declare a machine as the ultimate decision maker for who is alive and who isn't, we relegate our freedom of choice to the "Master Machine Interpreter." Isn't it easier to simply write down on paper whether you want to be kept alive or not, and then sign it? Make the law and the attorneys obey you and your paper rather than "consulting the MMI." Next, we will be running people through emissions testing!

It is quite obvious that Dr. Hirsch has a much more ethical and moral grasp of the significance of this wonderful research....

"The most consequential thing about this is that we have opened a door, we have found an objective voice for these patients, which tells us they have some cognitive ability in a way they cannot tell us themselves," Dr. Hirsch said. The patients are, she added, "more human than we imagined in the past, and it is unconscionable not to aggressively pursue research efforts to evaluate them and develop therapeutic techniques."


Fight4Terri @aol.com (Cheryl Ford, RN)
www.fight4terri.blogspot.com
Visit Terri's site:
www.terrisfight.org
"We make a Living by what we do,but we make a LIFE by what we give"~Winston Churchill