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Drug Found to Aid Vegetative Patients
Oxygen99 writes "BBC News is reporting on some amazing effects of a drug called Zolpidem on patients suffering from persistent vegetative state. Apparently the drug, usually used to treat insomnia, activates dormant areas of the brain that can make patients aware of their surroundings and even hold conversations. This raises several interesting points including the diagnosis of PVS and the attendant ethics of the associated life support, as well as the way the brain responds to injury and damage."
until it's been replicated and the results published in a peer reviewed neurology journal.
Over the years there have been miraculous cures for diseases that didn't pan out because they couldn't be replicated. Reasons for this might be: the study patients weren't really cured, the study patients improved, but didn't have the disease in question, scientific fraud, simple chance. This is the kind of result that has to be looked at skeptically, because if it were true, it would be true it would mean the bulk of what we think we know about the brain and its function is wrong.
It's possible, of course. Such possibilities are part of what makes science and exciting pursuit. It's also possible that the authors didn't do their study correctly. It's your choice as to what is most likely. If I had to bet, it would be the study population was not selected properly (i.e. they were in a coma, but not a PVS).
I checked out the journal in question. It is peer reviewed, but it is not a neuroscience journal per se. It is an interdisciplinary for various disciplines involved around rehab of brain damage patients. Although it's perfectly erspectable to publish in such a journal, the article would have a lot more initial credibility if it had been published in a journal specializing in basic neuroscience research. It would have to convince reviewers who would be forced by the publication to admit that they hold some significant misconceptions. It's a tough standard of truth, and it slows the spread of Truth (if you will), but it slows the spread of Error more.
If this is a legitimate result, the publication activity will be, to borrow a metaphor from Shaw, like the first pea in a handful of peas thrown at a wall: first one hits, then a couple, then a whole mass of them. Afterwards, the state of science will have changed in a fundamental way.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
My mother recently died in a similar manner; she was non-responsive, but not brain dead, and I asked that tubes be removed. She had zero chance of short-term meaningful recovery, and the long term was terminal brain cancer (the survival rate 96% of healthy patients her age was 2-6 months. The other 4% were dead in 10 months). She left very specific instructions regarding this possible eventuality (they included the words "Get Dr. Kervorkian"), so there was little debate from the rest of the family (none from the doctors).
I think you'll find that most patients die of pneumonia brought on by the morphine, and not by starvation. I sat by her bed for 10 days, and I can vouch for the level of comfort provided by the physicians...if her body showed any signs of distress, and we're talking elevated heart rate here, they took steps.
It is only a cruel way to die for the people who have to watch.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.