According to Fergus Walsh in "Vegetative patient Scott Routley says 'I'm not in pain' ", fMRI scans of patients who had been diagnosed for many years as vegetative because they showed zero observable responses that would suggest the presence of any conscious awareness of the world around them or of themselves have shown convincingly that although most are in fact vegetative, others do have periods of awareness, being able to answer Yes/No questions and in at least one case to have "laid down new memories" whilst believed to be incapable of sensing or thinking (2012).
This kind of reminds me of the situation described in The Matrix films, where Neo and everyone else are just brains connected to computers creating sensations of interaction with a world that doesn't exist: their bodies are withered and useless things that simply lie forever unused in a bath of goo. (The films don't tell us whether they go to the toilet in that state.) The difference of course is that in this case it's the computers using the fMRI data that allow the locked in brains of these people to communicate out to the world of humans around them. In this case, as Walsh emphasises, many years of ideas firmly believed by doctors and other medical professionals have been proven totally wrong.
That medical science has been proven wrong did not surprise me - that is fairly common, although as the standards improve, it's probably becoming less common than it has long been, when ideas were formed not on solid evidence from well constructed experiments or other research, but from small samples, anecdotal evidence or "what sounds reasonable" - all very dangerous paths to discovering any truth about the way the world works. I remember growing up that my mother always gave me a couple of eggs for breakfast, then the cholesterol connection with heart disease was discovered, so doctors sincerely started telling people to eat no more than a couple of eggs a week because of their high cholesterol content, advice which sounds reasonable, but is wholly unsupported by any research and was proven false when the actual research was done. As so often, it reminds me of the totally false belief many have that legalising drugs will increase drug use and addiction - a false belief which is never based on any solid evidence.
But the really important question that I immediately thought of while reading this BBC News story was to ask them whether they want to be kept alive in that state. Perhaps the doctors did not ask that question because they don't want to know the answer.
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It's a good news for one whose relatives or friends are still in a vegetative state because this success provides them hope to prolong their beloved persons.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, I have to say "sorry" to the world. Breaking the rule of nature, I mean the modern medical science saves a magnitude of people from diseases or severe syndromes and they die at a very old age, the world must suffer from more problems like larger amounts of pollution, garbage, and resource consumption.
And keeping those people alive in that state is extremely costly in medical resources, which can not then be used for other purposes, like saving children or tending to traffic accident victims. Is it the best use of scarce resources?
DeleteI totally agree with your point. To leave them in vegetative state is definitely wasting resources, but I don't know how effectively this therapeutic method works, so I cannot evaluate which ones is better.
DeleteIf the result is 80-100 percent, it's very welcome, because this means their family won't pay for a large amount of cost of medical care any more and the world gets one in the workforce back.
Perhaps I didn't make clear. The new technique is not therapeutic. It does not cure or do anything to improve the patient's condition. What it does is show that a minority of patients who seemed to be wholly vegetative actually have brains that are conscious and functioning at some times, that the patients are in fact able to think and have some awareness.
DeleteThe fMRI makes it possible to directly access the brain without relying on the body which the brain can no longer control.
That's why I thought the important question is not: Are you in pain? But: Do you want to be kept alive like this?
Is vegetative state as same as a paralysis?
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think so. Vegetative state is that you are alive like a vegetable - still breath with no respond to environment , such as Big D2B. And paralysis is that you can't walk and sometimes can't talk which is up to the part of your brain damage.
DeleteYou remind me about the time when I studied general philosophy in the university. Professor and students discussed about this famous phrase,"I think, therefore I am", after her assignment watching the movie "Vanilla Sky". It is interesting discussion to reignite the thought about "what is a life?".
ReplyDeleteAnd did you decide that Descartes' famous argument is sound or not? (I think not - at best, "I think" allows us to deduce the weaker statement "There is thinking" - perhaps Descartes should have gone for something like: cogito ergo cogitans est, and I'm not too sure about the first word (= first sentence) there, either. But that might not have helped him get to god and the world he so wanted to prove.
DeleteHe is, nonetheless, one of the truly great philosophers, as well as a brilliant mathematician. And a great writer - I love reading him just for the pleasure of his writing.
I remember the impression of seeing people in transparent cocoons who are connected with wired tubes in “Matrix”. I was appalled at the scene. One, Agent Smith, of them wants to live in the cocoon if he can live as a rich or a celebrity in the matrix. Actually, I can’t say he is wrong. He says that he can feel everything like the real in the matrix.
ReplyDeleteEven if he hasn’t proper body, we regard, how can we decide whether he hasn’t a right to continue his life if he wants to live? In many science fictions, we can meet things that we have to consider. ‘Brain’ in the robot that can act like human but cannot feel, still cannot remember the title of the book, and a third of vegetative body that can think and act in only a computer (“Source Code”, 2011), and Agent Smith who has a potential normal body doesn’t want to be a normal.
I like Katie's new twist to the questions raised.
DeleteI would also add that the whole Matrix idea of "brains in vats" was stolen from philosophers - the most direct recent versions are those of Robert Nozick (1983) and Hilary Putnam (1981), but the idea dates back to Descartes's deceiving demon and beyond that to Plato's cave 2,400 years ago.
References
Nozick, R. (1983) Philosophical Explanations, Cambridge: Belknap Press
Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
I don't think that living in vegetative state is a good quality of our life. You live with your breath or medical machine. You can't eat by yourself to taste the delicious food, to explore the world and to feel and express your sensation, If you are in vegetative state. My mom said to me that don't let her alive with medical machine because it's a time for her to go.
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