Ellen Goodman, the syndicated columnist at the Boston Globe is an enthusiastic leader of the band when it comes to promoting the culture of death.<\/p>\n
On September 15th she opined on the research coming out of England about the mental activity of people in an unconscious or semi-conscious state. Here’s the link to Goodman’s column, available through Wesley J. Smith’s weblog, followed by direct excerpts from her column:<\/p>\n
Playing Vegetative Mind Games<\/strong> by Ellen Goodman (complete link via Wesley J. Smith<\/a>)<\/p>\n In Britain, researchers have reported that a totally unresponsive 23-year-old woman showed signs of awareness on a brain-imaging test. When asked to imagine playing tennis, her brain lit up the same neural pathways as a healthy brain. When asked to imagine walking through her house, the MRI revealed changes in specific brain regions that mimicked healthy people.<\/p>\n The exuberant lead researcher, Adrian Owen, said the results “confirmed beyond any doubt that she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings." A colleague even raised the possibility that some vegetative patients have “a rich and complex internal life." Tennis in her head.<\/p>\n What are we to make of this? An editorial in Science magazine, which published the research, was quick to warn that this case is nothing like that of Terri Schiavo. The British woman has something Terri did not have: a cortex. She suffered an injury, not a lack of oxygen. She was in her unresponsive condition for five months, not 15 years. She was not in a persistent <\/em>vegetative state….<\/p>\n But what about the rest of us ? What about those of us who believed all along that Terri was, ironically, one of the easy cases. Surely, as one bioethicist said, this research creates another shade of gray in the understanding of gray matter. And in decisions that revolve around life and death.<\/p>\n We don’t know if similar patients will show the same level of awareness. …<\/p>\n But we do not know whether the researchers who suggest that vegetative patients may be aware of themselves and their surroundings have given us a hopeful story line or a horror story.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Attorney and bioethicist Wesley Smith wrote about this on his weblog.<\/p>\n\n