Discovering Life in Vegetative Patients by GinoBiffaroni

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Discovering Life in Vegetative Patients

POSTED BY: GINOBIFFARONI
UPDATED: Friday, November 27, 2009 02:04
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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 10:21 AM

My Second Birth'
Discovering Life in Vegetative Patients

By Manfred Dworschak

For over 20 years, doctors thought Rom Houben was brain dead. But then, neurologist Steven Laureys discovered that the Belgian was very much awake. Experts say that up to 40 percent of those thought to be in a persistent vegetative state are, in fact, quite conscious.

For half of his life Rom Houben, 46, had to listen to people say that he was as good as dead. At first, doctors would occasionally bend over him and wave their hands in front of his eyes, but because his gaze remained unresponsive, they eventually gave up. Caregivers would plead for some indication that he knew they were there -- a wink or a squeeze of the hand. But they too gave up after a while. Diagnosis: addressing him was pointless. There was no one home.

A former martial artist and engineering student, conversant in four languages, Houben was now wheelchair-bound, his body crooked and helpless. After his car accident, he became a creature that could just barely breathe, swallow and digest food, but was otherwise believed to be an empty shell of a human.

But the whole time, Houben was conscious -- and no one knew.

continues

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,663022,00.html

Found this very interesting,

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 10:27 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

I saw that one; it horrified me. All I could think of was what that man must have gone through for 23 years, being right there yet unable to communicate.

The article I saw dealt with how little time/attention doctors might pay to such a person and that if you saw someone for a few minutes, you might well miss that the person is cognizant, and how cognizance changes for some cases like this to where one minute it would be there, and another gone.

But we don't need healthcare reform, no siree...

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 1:15 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

To keep ones sanity after something like amazes me

Like the article stated the testing criteria and procedures really need to be revamped...

And this happened in Belgium, where there is a good public health system...

sad to think what those 23 years would be like in other countries where the extended care is almost non-existent...

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 4:36 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Genuinely horrifying.

Having seen all too many people leave this world, and some of them in really awful fashion, myself and a few of my allies have various agreements that should we fall below a certain criteria, the others will mercifully do us in to save us from a fate we feel is worse.

I've seen too many folk "vampirised" (my term) to want to undergo such an event myself, regardless of whether it is well-meant efforts to help, or the darker side of it, keeping the patient alive for no better reason than being able to continue billing them and their family - I've seen families utterly destroyed by the latter.

That's one reason I wasn't so upset at the manner of Dave's passing in Iraq, he was the guy who originally taught me about making stuff go boom, and he knew that eventually the odds would catch up with him in his work of disabling failed munitions - it was his fervent hope that when it did, they'd be burying a matchbox, since he "hoped not to linger" before he went.

He was clearing a local farmers field of american cluster bombs when his luck ran out, and went exactly the way he would have chosen, as did one of his trainees, and the other got slammed into a wall with no more damage than a broken arm and a little scorching - ironically the explosion chain-detonated the munitions and cleared the field for safe use, which I do believe would have amused him.

I made my peace with the fact that life is limited long ago, although I do plan to make the most of what I got, and despite my friends assertations that given my physical condition I might some day wind up a "brain in a box", the only way I'd really be interested in lingering past my time would be as a recorded AI imprint.
(and isn't that a damn scary thought ?)

Anyhows, I think I woulda rather went to my final judgement than what this man went through, honestly.

-F

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 5:05 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

I made my peace with the fact that life is limited long ago, although I do plan to make the most of what I got, and despite my friends assertations that given my physical condition I might some day wind up a "brain in a box", the only way I'd really be interested in lingering past my time would be as a recorded AI imprint.

-F

Be careful what you wish for...

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 5:15 PM

DREAMTROVE

I saw this story. I was appalled more than surprised. Given the amount of attention that I received even as a critical physical trauma patient sliced into slivers, which was sort of haphazard, they did almost kill me a couple times, but also ignored me a lot. Years later as a mental patient, I was property and experiment fodder. It did occur to me that a nightmare scenario of being simply left in a room forever was possible. I wonder how many of these people were euthanized on the assumption that they were vegetative.

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 5:25 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Oh don't I know it, I may be nasty, but I think RPI's little project completely outclasses me, lol.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/14/1730223/Team-Aims-To-Create-Pu
re-Evil-AI?from=rss
I don't self-identify as evil, mind you - but my thought, or hope, that if something like an AI imprint existed - and I stole this idea from William Gibson, in reference to Dixie Flatline, aka McCoy Pauley...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Characters

That it would remain forever a threat, however minor, against oppressive power structures.

While technologically we're "not there yet" with A.I. - or better described as A.S. (artificially sentient), we *DO* already have an emulation system which will absolutely pass a Turing test.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
It actually started as a program to emulate feline behavior, and kinda went from there, going through many rewrites and several programming languages over more than a decade.

And yes, it is personality based, Justin occasionally uses it when he wants my opinion on something he'd rather me not actually know about.
(It's IRC-compatible via a plug-in VBS module)

Primary flaw is that other than
Idle_Comment_Provoke_(RandomVal)_TimeExpire
It doesn't have any capability for spontaneous activity of it's own.

Anyhow, I digress, but it's an interesting topic which fascinates me, sorry.

-F

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 7:01 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I saw this story. I was appalled more than surprised. Given the amount of attention that I received even as a critical physical trauma patient sliced into slivers, which was sort of haphazard, they did almost kill me a couple times, but also ignored me a lot. Years later as a mental patient, I was property and experiment fodder. It did occur to me that a nightmare scenario of being simply left in a room forever was possible. I wonder how many of these people were euthanized on the assumption that they were vegetative.

or because they couldn't afford long term care...

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 11:52 PM

RIVERDANCER

Ugh. I'm with Frem and his boys. I would NOT want to live like that.

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Thursday, November 26, 2009 1:12 AM

AGENTROUKA

Is the term "brain dead" really applicable in this case? There's a big difference between a coma and brain death, right? The latter can be measured accurately?

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Thursday, November 26, 2009 11:00 AM

GINOBIFFARONI

Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Is the term "brain dead" really applicable in this case? There's a big difference between a coma and brain death, right? The latter can be measured accurately?

I believe the people who wrote the story were trying to make the case that the test procedures in use were inaccurate about %40 of the time...

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Friday, November 27, 2009 2:04 AM

AGENTROUKA

Quote:
Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Is the term "brain dead" really applicable in this case? There's a big difference between a coma and brain death, right? The latter can be measured accurately?

I believe the people who wrote the story were trying to make the case that the test procedures in use were inaccurate about %40 of the time...

I'm aware of that, but if I read it correctly, they do not actually measure brain death, they just estimate the severity of a "vegetative state", and very incorrectly.

Is that really 100% the same thing?

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