Schiavo at a Slight Remove
Published April 06, 2005
We with access to computers, microphones, cameras, or simply our own voices have expended a vast amount of time and energy publicly wrestling with our opinions and/or attempting to convince others of the rightness of said opinions regarding poor, benighted, now deceased Terri Schiavo.
At this point I am willing to concede that she was not going to recover and that the life she was leading was likely that of utter vacuity: there was no there there, nor was there ever going to be. I am no less troubled by her case and sad, sad end, however.
An illuminating article in the New York Times sheds light on states of consciousness:
- The most familiar unconscious state is sleep, which in its deepest phases is characterized by little electrical activity in the brain and almost complete unresponsiveness. Coma, the most widely known state of impaired unconsciousness, is in fact a continuum. Doctors rate the extent to which a comatose person shows pain responses and reactions to verbal sounds on a scale from 3, for no response, to 13, for consistent responses.
As in sleep, people in comas may move or make sounds and typically have no memory of either. But they almost always emerge from this state in two to three weeks, doctors say, when the eyes open spontaneously. What follows is critical for the person's recovery.
Those who are lucky, or who have less severe injuries, gradually awaken.
...The primitive brain stem, which controls sleep-wake cycles as well as reflexes, asserts itself first, as the eyes open. Ideally, areas of the cerebral cortex, the seat of conscious thought, soon follow, like lights flicking on in the upper rooms of a darkened house.
But in some cases - Ms. Schiavo's was one of them - the cortical areas fail to engage, and the patient's prognosis becomes dire.
Neurologists were all but unanimous in diagnosing the condition of Ms. Schiavo, whose heart stopped temporarily in 1990, depriving her brain of oxygen. Brain cells and neural connections wither and die without oxygen, like marine life in a drained lake, leaving virtually nothing unharmed.
People with these kinds of injuries - Nancy Cruzan, whose case reached the Supreme Court in 1990 is an example - almost always remain unresponsive if they have not regained awareness in the first months after the injury.
- Schiavo at a Slight Remove
- Published: April 06, 2005
- Type:
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Science, Politics: Law and Rights
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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Comments on this articleComments
worthy point, I'm not sure how far we can carry the "science of the future" argument, though
Nor can we guarantee the future of stem cell research in this "culture of life" that the President wishes us to embrace.
I think it's perfectly logical to require that we conduct stem cell research without actually killing any stem cells.
Don't you?
[It is ... A-LIIIIIIIVE!]
Eric, that was a moving piece. We've seen three deaths in the last few days: Terri Schindler Schiavo, Pope John Paul II and Prince Rainier. How sad it is that the Pope's death took Terri's death and aftermath off the front pages because they are alike in many ways. Many will never come to learn of Prince Rainier's role in World War II because the Pope's death has eclipsed all other events.
All of that being said, I honestly hope that a reasoned and thoughtful debate takes place on the political stage. I'm with Eric on this one, I think we have a responsibility to "err on the side of life."
completely agree on the importance of stem cell research and find the governmental hemming and hawing absurd
yes, I had a dream - you don't have dreams?
thanks SK, these various state laws have appeared pretty much underneath the radar and it is definitely tiem for a very public discussion of these issues, which could be a positive result of the whole sad Schiavo affair
The possibility that there might be some "there" there, as you felt in your dream, is something that i myself have dreamt. and it makes me all the more certain that i would choose for myself to not persist in the "vegetative state". Without a quick release like Cheif gave McMurphy in Cuckoo's Nest, I would still rather suffer the two weeks of hunger to relieve me of the 15 years of living death with people talking about me and waving balloons in my unresponsive face.
That said though, i did inform my wife that had it been her, i probably would not have been as steadfast as the husband and would have considered my contract, if we are to believe that there was one, as being void. since i would believe that there was no feeling, no knowing, no anything, i figure that there would be no need to honor the wishes and instead would perhaps attempt to give some relief to the living survivors who evidently found comfort in their visits to the bedside.
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I'm not as sure as you are that there was no hope whatsoever for recovery. I'm perfectly willing to concede that that's so given the present state of medicine, but Terri Schiavo was a young woman. Who knows what they might have been able to do for her ten years from now with stem cells or some as yet unknown therapy?