Gus > Remember: all the footages broadcast by CNN and co dated from 2002 or earlier.
This is from CNS News
cnsnews.com
>>Cybercast News Service found more than two dozen cases where published news reports document patients diagnosed as being in a persistent or permanent vegetative state, or coma "waking up," including:
Recovery after three years - Marcello Manunza suffered a brain injury during a car crash in November 1987. In July 1990, relatives noticed that he was following them around the room with his eyes and appeared to be trying to read encouraging signs that had been placed in his nursing home room. Within days he was able to eat, control the movement of his limbs and speak;
Recovery after seven years - Hawaii resident Peter Sana lapsed into a coma after contracting meningitis, an inflammation of the membrane that encloses the brain and spinal cord. He was in a Honolulu nursing home in September 2001 when he began responding to commands from nurses. Sana's father visited him every day during the seven years. His caregivers credit visits by family members with giving Sana the will to wake up;
Recovery after eight years - The first thing Conley Holbrook said after rousing from a PVS in 1991 was "Momma." He then identified the two men who had beaten him unconscious with a log on Nov. 27, 1982. Holbrook awoke while he was hospitalized for pneumonia; and
Recovery after 18 years - In 1983, Patti White Bull of South Dakota was diagnosed as being in a coma or PVS due to complications from a Caesarean section. Two months later, her husband and other family members removed her from life support. On Christmas Day 1999, White Bull woke up and asked to see her children. A day later, she was walking around her nursing home room with assistance.
A 1996 study published in the British Medical Journal found that 43 percent of patients in the United Kingdom thought to be in a PVS had been misdiagnosed. Of the 40 patients whose cases were reviewed, 17 were later found to be "alert, aware and often able to express a simple wish."
A 1993 study of 49 patients found that 18 of them, or 37 percent, "were diagnosed inaccurately.
-----
"We must have clear, compelling and written evidence that that is the patient's desire before that is removed," Stevens argued, adding that allowing such decisions to be made based on hearsay testimony creates the potential for conflicts of interest, especially when those testifying stand to gain financially [or otherwise] from the death of the disabled individual.
Even when such a written directive not to use a feeding tube to keep a patient alive exists, Stevens argued that the physician's ethical responsibility continues.
"The critical issue is that, if you do not put a feeding tube in, you must, you must offer food and water by mouth," Stevens said. "If you don't do that, it's not the disease that kills the patient. It's you that kills the patient.
"That was the big ethical issue, the most foundational issue in the Terri Schiavo case," Stevens said. "That is like not only taking someone off a respirator because it's futile, but also, at the same time, removing all of the oxygen from the room.
"Your intent is not to remove a burdensome therapy," Stevens concluded. "Your intent is to remove a burdensome patient."<< |
