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Kate Adamson and Terri Schiavo

Yesterday I wrote about Kate Adamson, a woman who at one time was in a coma and had her feeding tube "removed" similar to what is planned for Terri Schiavo this Friday. Instead of being unconscious as the doctors believed she was aware of everything and lived to write a book about the experience.

I should have linked to this post by Dori at Wittenberg Gate because it is exceptional. She writes,

One has to wonder how many people are aware, but locked in, and never emerge, as Kate has done, to tell their stories. A recent study (Dr. Nicholas Schiff, et al, published in Neurology) suggests that there may be far more awareness than previously thought in patients who are thought to be minimally conscious or in a vegetative state. Using the latest fMRI technology to measure brain response to stimuli, the researchers found that minimally conscious patients, while lacking in other areas of brain function, responded almost identically to normal subjects to the voices of relatives telling stories of shared experiences. There were even indications of activity in the brain's visual processing areas of a patient with his eyes closed, listening to his sister's voice. This could be an indication that he was forming mental images as he heard her speak.

One does have to wonder. I may be outside my area of expertise but the crisis involving Terri Schiavo and the story behind Kate Adamson seems to reveal the inability of modern medicine to determine, with certainty, the lack of consciousness. Scientists have for years assumed that the lack of a certain type of brain activity was indicative of brain death and that the sensitivity of their equipment was an adequate means of detection.

With recent advances in imaging technology and inexplicable exceptions to medical diagnoses, it has become clear that indicators of consciousness are uncertain and subjective and that brain scans may tell us something about the level of an individual's capabilities but are not necessarily a true indicator of death.

Posted by tim at March 15, 2005 12:30 PM

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