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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001 time: 00:36
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So, Drake, since you know so much about MRIs, what is the MRI going to tell us that hasn't been told by the other tests? Clinging to the MRI is simply childish and shows a lack of understanding about what it means.
http://www.rangelmd.com/2005/02/new...e-patients.html
quote:
Are brain injured, comatose patients aware? - Using MRI scans of the brain, a new study in the journal Neurology found that patients who are brain damaged and minimally responsive may be capable of displaying the same type of brain activity to various external stimuli as healthy patients. Does this mean that they are aware? Maybe. Maybe not. We still don't know enough about consciousness to understand if certain brain activity equates to awareness. But this didn't stop the New York Times from taking an apple and trying to convince its readers that it's an orange!
Dr. Bernat [professor of neurology at Dartmouth] said findings from studies like these would be relevant to cases like that of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman with brain damage who has been kept alive for years against her husband's wishes. In that case, which drew the attention of Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature, relatives of Ms. Schiavo disagreed about her condition, and a brain-imaging test - once it has been standardized - could help determine whether brain damage has extinguished awareness.
Ms. Schiavo suffered severe brain damage from a cardiac arrest and a lack of blood flow and oxygen to her brain. She is kept alive with a feeding tube in her stomach.
When ever a part of the body is severely and irreversibly injured it tends to atrophy (shrink). In the case of Ms. Schiavo, CAT scans have shown that ever since her cardiac arrest her cerebral cortex (that outer layer of the brain that allows us to think and to be conscious and self aware) has atrophied so much that little is left and the rest has been replaced by cerebrospinal fluid.
If one of these functional MRI tests were done on Ms. Schiavo to see if her brain could react to external stimuli there would not be enough of her brain left for the MRI to detect such a reaction. Any reactions that are seen in Ms. Schiavo's brain during such a test (in the deeper autonomic areas) would likely just confuse the issue since we still have no way of knowing if these reactions mean that there is consciousness and would draw attention away from what we do know; that the thinking part of Ms. Schiavo's brain is gone thus making consciousness extremely unlikely.
What's more is that Dr. Bernstein points out that the study in question used patients who were in a minimally conscious state and by definition, patients in such a state are still capable of awareness. Terry Schiavo is in what is clinically described as a Persistent Vegetative State in which the brain damage is so severe that there is no conscious self-awareness.
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And that's a doctor who knows something about it, not a preacher.
Your persistent efforts to smear Micheal Schiavo with distortions on reality are really awesome, though! Keep it up!
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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001 time: 00:36
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quote: Originally posted by Tuberski
Point number 1.
A loving and caring husband that has a girlfriend and kids with the girlfriend? |
A man who is supposed to do nothing else with his life for 15 years, despite the fact that his wife is never going to get any better? I fail to see how his going on with life is an indicator that he doesn't love his wife or care about her. Further smears against Schiavo, I see.
quote: You guys are saying to end her suffering. Take out the feeding tube.
Opponents say yeah starve her to death, make her suffer before she dies.
Response: She won't suffer, she has PVS.
Well, if she won't suffer because she has PVS, SHE SURE AS HELL ISN'T SUFFERING NOW!!!! |
The issue is whether she should be forced to persist in such a state, pain or not. You yourself wouldn't, neither would your wife. Neither would I. Neither would the vast majority of people.
You have no way of knowing whether or not she would feel pain in her PVS state. There isn't any real medical consensus on that issue.
So there, you've had your two arguments blown apart. Happy?
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