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Aside from the misleading claim in the article referring to my sister, Terri Schiavo, as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), the Boston Globe did a wonderful follow-up story on Haleigh Poutre’s tragic situation.Back in 2006, Haleigh made national news when her stepfather beat her into a coma. It was just a short time subsequent to this act of violence that her doctors decided this 13-year old had zero chance to recover and her legal guardian went to the courts for permission to remove Haleigh’s life sustaining care.In fact, if Haleigh would have happened to survive the removal of...

Bioethics exploded into the headlines over the last few weeks after the Journal of Medical Ethics published an article promoting “after-birth abortion,” that is, the right of parents to have infants killed if the child’s presence in life did not serve their (or society’s) interests. But hidden by the sturm und drang over infanticide, Bioethics published another radical proposal that received virtually no attention—but which, if adopted, could result in thousands of persistent vegetative state (PVS) patients being dehydrated to death.The question concerns whether or not to provide such patients with food and water. Tube-supplied sustenance—called artificial nutrition and hydration...

Radical bioethics–and that constitutes much of the mainstream, in my view–continues to push for a wider death agenda. Last week, we discussed an article in the Journal of Bioethics that promoted the propriety of infanticide for even healthy babies if that best served the desires or needs of actual “people.” Today, let’s discuss an article just published in Bioethics urging a dehydrate-them-to-death default position for people diagnosed as persistently unconscious. From “Withdrawal of Artificial Nutrition and Hydration for Patients in a Permanent Vegetative State: Changing Tack,” by a medical resident at New York School of Medicine named Catherine Constable (Abstract...

An American doctor argues in the latest issue of the leading journal Bioethics that artificial nutrition and hydration should be withdrawn from all patients in a permanent vegetative state – unless there is clear evidence that they want to be kept alive. Dr Catherine Constable, of New York University School of Medicine, studied bioethics at the Ethox Centre at Oxford University. She argues that the current presumption in favour of maintaining ANH is misguided. It is not in the interests of the patient nor, because of its cost, in the interest of society.However, her argument is not based upon cost,...

Most philosophical arguments against the personhood of embryos, fetuses or comatose patients focus on consciousness as the capacity that corresponds to the possession of moral value.  Conscious human beings, even minimally conscious, are obviously ‘one of us’ — have interests, feel pain, perceive objects, and can offer at least rudimentary gestures of self-report.  Since they are “persons” they should not be subjected to purely instrumental treatment such as lethal experimentation or deadly dosages of drugs.  Those who cannot exercise consciousness are either not yet persons (e.g., embryos) or no longer persons (e.g., irreversibly comatose patients). In end-of-life issues, all the...

July 11, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After years of opposition from disability advocates, more experts are beginning to question the validity of the “persistent vegetative state” (PVS) diagnostic label that paved the way for Terri Schiavo’s starvation death. A Discover magazine article published online July 6 explained that PVS often fails to account for a broad swath of traumatic brain injury patients who are deemed to be “still in there” - a conclusion one science reporter called “haunting.” Discover’s Kat McGowan examined the outcome of years of experiments by Dr. Joseph Giancino, director of rehabilitation neuropsychology at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital,...

In a recent column in the Huffington Post, Jacob M. Appel argues for “rational rationing” of health care resources by withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining medical treatment from patients in a permanent vegetative state. He considers the case of Ruben Betancourt, which will soon be decided by the New Jersey Superior Court in Betancourt v. Trinitas Regional Medical Hospital. Mr. Betancourt was a patient at Trinitas Regional Medical Hospital in Elizabeth, N.J., where he had successful surgery for a malignant thymoma in January 2008. But Mr. Betancourt suffered oxygen deprivation, resulting in severe brain damage, after accidental extubation of his...

A MOTHER-of-two has defied doctors to make a miraculous recovery from a horror car smash. Michelle Owens, who was a general practice doctor, was given little chance of survival after an accident near Beaudesert last June. Family members were told her critical injuries meant there was an 80 per cent chance she would stay in a vegetated state. Dr Owens received multiple head and brain injuries, a broken pelvis and collarbone, but last week the 37-year-old was back home in Stretton after three months in a coma and nine months in hospital. Thanks to the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit at...

As scientists have the first 'conversation' with a patient in a vegetative state, one man's awe-inspiring story'One cannot even begin to imagine the despair, frustration and fear that was Martin Pistorius's life for more than a decade. After contracting meningitis at the age of 12, he found himself locked inside his body and spent 14 years with no form of communication and completely unable to control his body. His parents were told that their only option was to allow him to die and that he had the brain function of a three-month-old baby. That, however, was not the case. While...

In a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, four of 23 patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state showed signs of consciousness on brain-imaging tests. Even more significantly, one patient was able to answer yes and no questions using the researchers' technique—indicating the potential for communication with people previously considered unresponsive. Researchers at two centers, in England and Belgium, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests on 54 patients with severe brain injury. Of these patients, 31 were diagnosed as being in a minimally conscious state, meaning they showed intermittent signs of awareness such as...

The case of Terri Schiavo--who died five years ago next March, deprived for nearly two weeks of food and water, even the balm of ice chips--continues to prick consciences. That may be one reason the case of Rom Houben, a Belgian man who was misdiagnosed for 23 years as being in a persistent vegetative state, is now receiving international attention. In 1983, Houben suffered catastrophic head injuries in an automobile accident. He arrived at the hospital unconscious. Doctors eventually concluded that his case was hopeless, and his family was told he would never waken. But the Houben family, like...

By Alex Schadenberg, Chairman, Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionNovember 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Many people will have read the story of Rom Houben, the Belgium man who was diagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) for 23 years, but who in fact had a condition known as Locked-in Syndrome. A person in locked-in syndrome is fully aware of all of their surroundings and they hear and remember the conversations that take place around them, but due to their cognitive disability they are unable to respond.The case of Rom Houben is significant given that many bioethicists are attempting to redefine...

After World War II, the U.S. government invested an enormous amount of money in medicine; medical research, medical procedures and medical technologies. This investment made contemporary scientific medicine into American medicine, characterized by a continuing flow of new treatment possibilities. These advances raised all kinds of ethical questions. Some were personal and individual, others were social and political. Both type questions are addressed by a new academic discipline called bioethics. The first attempt to develop a scientific medicine took place in Greece in the 5th century B.C. It was called Hippocratic medicine. Closely linked with this first scientific medicine was...

Contact: Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, 727-490-7603   ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Aug. 29 /Christian Newswire/ -- The family of Robert Schindler, Sr. releases the following statement:   Robert S. Schindler, Sr., of Gulfport, Florida, father of the late Terri Schindler Schiavo, passed away August 29, 2009 from heart failure at Northside Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.   Robert fought valiantly to save the life of his brain-injured daughter Terri in the landmark right to life case that culminated in her imposed death by court-ordered starvation and thirst on March 31, 2005. After Terri's death, along with his wife Mary, daughter...

Rome, Italy (LifeNews.com) -- The neurologist for Eluana Englaro, the disabled woman who has become the center of an international debate over whether she should be killed via euthanasia, says she is healthy. All of the medical tests conducted prior to Friday's stoppage of food and water reveal a healthy patient. Englaro was injured in an automobile accident in 1992 and has been in a minimally conscious state ever since. Her father recently won the legal right to kill her by removing her feeding tube.Carlo Alberto Defanti, who is overseeing the withdrawal of food and water, made the comments...

Haleigh was being given food and water through a feeding and hydration tube. A year later, the Massachusetts Department of Social Services filed a legal motion to remove it. They cited the medical finding of “PVS”. Her stepfather then sued to prevent the removal of the assistance. There was speculation in some sources that he did this to avoid criminal charges for murder. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that the assistance could be removed in a controversial ruling. One day after the ruling, Haleigh surprised all of her caregivers by breathing without the need for assistance and showing signs...

Enlarge ImageAltered perceptions? Minimally conscious patients may have a greater capacity to feel pain than do those in a vegetative state (such as Terri Schiavo, above).Credit: Reuters Most of the time, doctors have a simple way to determine if a patient needs pain medication: They ask. But when a brain injury renders someone unable to respond to questions, the right course of action becomes murkier. Now a study finds that the brains of some patients with brain injuries respond to an unpleasant electrical shock much as do the brains of healthy people, suggesting that these patients may feel pain...

This segment was originally broadcast on Nov. 25, 2007. It was updated on Aug. 28, 2008. Three years ago, Terri Schiavo sparked a nationwide debate when she was removed from a feeding tube. Schiavo was in a permanent vegetative state with no chance of recovery. But there are as many as 300,000 other Americans who have survived brain injuries, only to be trapped in what's called a "minimally conscious state." They can't talk, walk, or eat, but they retain more mental awareness than vegetative patients. For decades now, minimally conscious people have been all but written off by the medical...

Not long after complaining of shortness of breath at her Quinlan home, Patricia Cannon was in a Hunt County ambulance heading north toward Greenville with a drug dripping into her veins capable of paralyzing every muscle in her body.The drug, succinylcholine, was administered by a paramedic. The intent was for Cannon, thought to be suffering from a blood clot in the lung, to be immobilized while a breathing tube was placed in her windpipe.But something happened along the way that prevented the tube from being inserted correctly. The job wasn't done until the ambulance delivered Cannon, 41, to the emergency...

Of course, Pro-deathers will be quick to keep the Schiavo case in check.