September 8, 2006
RAISING THE QUESTION, BUT NOT THE STANDARD (via mc):
Vegetative patients may have awareness (LAURAN NEERGAARD, 9/07/06, AP)
Advanced brain scanning uncovered startling signs of awareness in a woman in a vegetative state, British scientists reported Thursday — a finding that complicates one of medicine's ethical minefields.The work is sure to elicit pleas from families desperate to know if loved ones deemed beyond medical help have brain activity that doctors don't suspect. "Can he or she hear and understand me?" is a universal question. [...]
"It raises the questions of ethics and experience of these patients, I think, to a new level," said neuroscientist Joy Hirsch of New York's Columbia University Medical Center. "It raises the tension about how we treat these patients."
But, "making medical decisions based on this information at this point in time we say is not appropriate," warned Hirsch, who is conducting similar research and already receives "just heartwrenching" requests for help.
So let's err on the side of murder? Posted by Orrin Judd at September 8, 2006 10:26 AM
That's how it works for a Woman's Right to Choose. Why would this be different? One less mouth to feed is one less mouth to feed.......
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at September 8, 2006 11:14 AMYes, just as in the War on Terror, it is much easier to err on the side of murder.
Posted by: Ginger Black at September 8, 2006 2:25 PMTaking the easy way in the WoT would be likewise evil.
Posted by: oj at September 8, 2006 3:16 PM