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.

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.