The problems with this are plenty however. The costs for tests are substantial and cannot always be reliable. Patients could have sever cognitive dysfunctions impairing them from having there will be shown appropriately. This also brings in the question of what defines the term alive and conscience. Whatever the answers may be the scientific and medical community will need to decide what would be the proper way of treating those in a vegetative state. Even though some patients may exhibit ability to actively control there mind they still may never wake up from the coma. There is no sure way yet to know how patients could wake up.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
People in Long Term Comas Not Necessarily Brain Dead
After reading the article Brain Imaging Lets Vegetative Patient Communicate by Emily Singer, it has made me think about the ethics and handling of supposed brain dead patients. It has also made me realize how far our society has come in the medical field. In this case study by Singer she found that vegetative patients were able to answer yes or no questions by having the patient imagine if they were doing a motor task or a spatial task. Each of those tasks cause different parts of the brain to flare up. They monitored these flares using an MRI machine.
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I agree with you, terms like 'consciousness' and 'alive' need to be redefined with these new advances in technology. However, I think that this method shows lots of promise, and more research should be done. Perhaps the reason why this study was so inaccurate was because some people in a vegetative state couldn't accurately play out the spatial or motor activity they were assigned (whether that part of their brain is damaged, or they just don't understand).
ReplyDeleteI think the fact that we can make meaningful contact with anyone in a vegetative state is a huge medical breakthrough.