Communicating With The Brain Dead

Did you see this on the news? Scientists say they have been able to communicate with comatose patients who heretofore were though to be unable to communicate because they were totally unaware.

These brain dead patients, as they have been called, showed signs of brain activity when the doctors asked them to clench a fist or wiggle their toes. Not too much in the way of communication. After all, who would settle for that?

But scientists of course are not done:

“Can you imagine spending years without being able to interact with anyone around you?” Cruse said. “We can ask them what it’s like to be in this condition. Do they know where they are? Do they know who is around them? What do they need?’ This will lead to very profound implications.”

Other experts, while praising the research, cautioned that much more work is needed to confirm the findings and refine the technology.

“Laypeople will interpret these experimental results as a clinical test, and they are not ready to be used that way,” said Nicholas D. Schiff, a neurologist at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

As many as 20,000 Americans are in a vegetative state, meaning they are alive and awake but without any apparent sense of awareness, and 100,000 to 300,000 are in a related condition known as a minimally conscious state, in which they exhibit impaired or intermittent awareness. A growing body of evidence in recent years has indicated that a significant proportion might have more awareness than had been thought. (Washingtonpost.com)

Ask them what it is like? To be aware that your family surrounds you, worried sick and you cannot communicate with them? What is it like to be locked in this prison called your mind? They have to ask?

What this may result in is many more families being unwilling to pull the plug because they now have the faint hope that their loved one is alive and may someday be able to communicate. If it were me, I'd say pull away.