Before anybody screams "Terry Schiavo!", re-read the "brains scans revealed" part.

[Are_grits_groceries]

'A brain scan finally revealed Houben was conscious A Belgian man who doctors thought was in a coma for 23 years was conscious all along, it has been revealed.

Medical staff believed Rom Houben had sunk irretrievably into a coma after he was injured in a car crash in 1983.

The University of Liege doctor who discovered in 2006 that, although Mr Houben was paralysed, his brain was working, said the case was not unique.

Mr Houben said that at first he felt angry at his powerlessness, but eventually learned to live with it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8375326.stm

A point to remember when somebody starts that argument.

[Orrex]

1. Thanks for posting this.

When I read Houben's story, I immediately had visions of outraged Schaivo-advocates howling about how Democrats had murdered her, etc.

[Are_grits_groceries]

2. Me too.

That's why I'm glad I found the article.

[KittyWampus]

3. well, the Randi-worshipping pseudo-skeptics are howling too.

[Orrex]

4. I hadn't read that angle yet, but I'll look into it

However, "facilitated communication" is generally a fraud.

[SidDithers]

8. Randi also thinks facilitated communication is a fraud...

and that's what's going on with this Belgian man.

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/783-this-cruel-farce-has-to-stop.html

Sid

[SidDithers]

12. And the believe-anything, auras and chakras crowd fawns adoringly...nt

Sid

[Barack_America]

5. I've got to say, I see no evidence that he is actually communicating.

I don't see him guiding her hand in any way. I don't see any extraocular movements to suggest he is tracking what he is "writing" or searching out letters on the touchpad.

This is not to say he isn't aware, his brain perfusion clearly indicates that he is not brain dead. But, as for actually fully cognizant and communicating this video does nothing to convince me of that.

[Orrex]

31. I finally saw video of that woman pressing buttons with the guy's finger

Anyone who thinks that he's communicating in this way is full of baloney.

The same level of communication can be achieved just as convincingly by using a cat's tail or a socket wrench.

[Gold Metal Flake]

6. Schiavo's head was like a bucket of water.

[Taverner]

24. EXACTLY

[Sarah Ibarruri]

7. Two opinions/questions regarding this....

(1) Belgium provides health care workers for free for people like this one. The U.S. does not. What is a person to do?

(2) Apparently scans did not show that Terri Schiavo had the same ability that was revealed in this man through scans. He apparently had been "misdiagnosed" through scans. When they finally did other scans, it showed he was "awake." Terri Schiavo had a zillion scans done becaused there was a big to-do about her condition. No scans showed she had the ability of this man to communicate. I don't think everyone who is in a coma has the same situation. Terri Schiavo is not this man. Should we consider everyone in a coma automatically to have the same condition?

[Barack_America]

9. You really think this man is communicating?

[Sarah Ibarruri]

10. I don't know. I know the helper moves his hand. ???

It's just all very odd. Maybe he is conscious but is not communicating and it's the helper doing all the hand moving?

[Barack_America]

11. I don't understand how he is communicating with the "helper".

He shows no hand movements that would guide her hand, nor any eye movements that would indicate which keys he would like pushed.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

13. I agree. I'm not saying he's communicating. I'm assuming that someone has

believed he's communicating.

[MattBaggins]

18. That's why it's a fraud

It's as real as a Ouija board.

[arthritisR_US]

27. they call it "facilitated communication". I worked with it years ago and every single

double blind study did not support it. I felt it was fraud and questioned the motivation of the people who were using it.

[BonnieJW]

14. I wonder why

a brain scan wasn't performed early in the treatment. Wouldn't that be standard?

[Barack_America]

15. PET scans, which check perfusion weren't around 23 years ago.

The best they could've done is CT with dye. There's any number of reasons why that could've been misinterpreted. After all, there's a reason that PET scans have emerged as the "gold standard" for these types of studies.

[LynneSin]

16. That's her brain on the right....

[Barack_America]

19. Those are some, um, prominent ventricles.

To grossly understate the case.

To put it in general terms, when it came to Schiavo's cortex, there was no there, there.

[Javaman]

17. Terry Schiavo!

I just yelled it for the hell of it. LOL

[LynneSin]

20. A million people facing a leaking Levee and a Cat5 hurricane couldn't bring Bush out of vacation...

but Teri Schiavo could

:grr:

[Javaman]

22. in his pajama's yet.

I think the next massively destructive hurricane should be called the Teri Schiavo. That will get the repukes to act fast.

[tonysam]

21. A lot of us out here aren't right-wingers and felt Michael Schiavo and his attorney

were full of shit.

Schiavo had a new girlfriend and pot of money to get hold of (which of course went down the drain to pay his lawyer), and he wanted to knock his incapacitated wife off legally so he could get both. Even when Schiavo was ready to throw in the towel and turn over Terri to her parents, that scumbag lawyer talked him out of it.

Some of us followed this issue, and the "liberal" blogs always got it wrong because they wanted to use this tragedy as a way to fight off the "right-to-lifers" who tended to support Terri's parents. But it wasn't really about "right-to-die" vs. "right-to-life"; it was really a disability rights issue. Unfortunately, the real issue was buried in the media.

[EOTE]

23. You are aware there's a difference between disabled and brain dead, right? NT

[pitohui]

28. there was no pot of money

now you're just making shit up

terry schiavo was on medicaid, any money was long long gone

and, yes, there is a rights issue, the rights of the surviving spouse to have something to live on after a lifetime of work, rather than have the medical industry drain every fucking penny

for michael schiavo, who is relatively young, and can still work, no big deal maybe but for those of us who are older and who would like our spouses to be able to survive after we pass on, yah, it's a very big deal that the medical industry can try to stick you on a machine and take everything you have and leave your spouse with nothing

[me b zola]

32. Jesus H Christ on a trailor hitch

:eyes:

[pitohui]

25. oh god if this ever happens to me just put a pillow over my face

i don't know what is worse -- it's a cruel hoax on the family which has been torturing a helpless man for years by keeping him alive on machines in such a state and of course the family can't now admit to being torturers so they have to create this false happy ending...but say it isn't a hoax, say he really is aware in there, and this man has been paralyzed for 23 years unable to move or communicate -- he would be completely insane, the effects of isolation materialize in months not years


there is no circumstance in which this can be a good or happy discovery


i'll take a chance on dying a bit early rather than being kept alive for decades like this, having known people kept "alive" for no purpose except for the profit of the medical industry, you don't really know how much the person is suffering but considering how awful it is to be trapped in a dream of horror where you are suffering and how you fight to wake up, i think we can figure it's pretty damn awful -- we suffer such dreams for minutes but imagine being trapped w. no way out to wake up and take action for years or decades

you wouldn't sentence the worst murderer in the world to such a torture but you do it to a helpless sick or injured person?

[BurtWorm]

26. There's very good reason to be skeptical of Mr. Houbens's ability to communicate

It may be that his brain is more active than doctors knew. That doesn't mean it's healthy.

If you saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, you saw a replication of a method a man with locked-in syndrome used to communicate with his therapists, family and editors. In that case, M. Bauby, the patient, was able to dictate his memoirs, painstakingly, by blinking his left eye--the only region of his face over which he had control--as a 'facilitator,' if you will, read him a modified alphabet. Bauby had to spell out each word extremely slowly. If you saw the film, you'll have a sense of the speed of communication we're talking about:

"A...E...R...S..." (blink) "S?" (blink) (transcriber writes down S) "A...E..." (blink) "E?" (blink) (transcriber writes down E) Etc.

Bauby had been incapacitated for a much shorter time than Houbens and had, at least, one very alive eye, but here Houbens is supposedly able to rattle off his thoughts with almost as much speed as if he were guiding his hand himself? I don't think so.

I was reserving judgment, ready to accept the story at face value, until I remembered how excrutiatingly slowly Bauby communicated his thoughts. As I say, Houbens may have more brain power than suspected, but it certainly doesn't look like it's he doing the communicating.

[arthritisR_US]

29. when I saw the picture of the worker holding the patients arm I realized it was

facilitated communication and know it's bunk.

[Ian David]

30. See also: Communicating Coma Man Rom Houben is a Cruel Hoax

Communicating Coma Man Rom Houben is a Cruel Hoax
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7079718&mesg_id=7079718