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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."
Great!!! Finally they found medicine for my boss!!
FP, BTW?
hilarious
A person in a vegetative state will appear to be awake and may have their eyes open, but will show no awareness of their surroundings.
They will not be able to interact with other people, and will show no responses to sounds or things that happen around them.
But they will show signs of movement, and cycles of sleep and may be able to breathe on their own.
So what would happen if they would start to give these drugs to technical support people and system admins? Would they also start to show responses to their environment, and manage to hold a conversation?
According to the autopsy, this drug would have had to have done a lot more than described here. Maybe if they'd given it to her when she first fell into a coma (we'll never know) but by the time she died, her brain was irreperable.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
If my brain has been damaged so much that I can only be roused to awareness of my surroundings by a drug that artificially and temporarily activates bits and pieces of my brain, I just want to die quickly and painlessly. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest crime against me would be to keep me alive.
"Her parents desperately fought to keep her alive, because she could make sounds, move her limbs, keep solid eye contact on someone"
So can an ant. It doesn't make them human. If the personality is gone
and theres no sign of intellect all you have left is a base functioning
brain.
"It was downright horrible and state approved MURDER."
In your opinion. Perhaps if you'd been her husband you might have a
different opinion. You sanctamonious types are all mouth. I'd love to see
one of have to see your wife be a vegetable for years or even decades
and see if you still have your arrogant self righteous opinions then.
"Ths drug could have helped her have a normal life, but she did not live long enough to ever have the chance to try it!"
And many people in the middle ages died because they couldn't wait 500
years for anti biotics to be invented. So fscking what?
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.
For those that didn't bother to read the medical reports and instead relied on the newspapers/media, Terri's brain had totally atrophied away, it was gone. Her skull contained the brain stem, a bit of shrivelled brain and an awful lot of fluid. There really was no hope, she was long gone.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
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.
Drugs to aid vegetative patients is ridiculous when you can simply cure them by feeding them meat.
My eldest child has an undiagnosed condition that has left her unable to walk, talk, move, eat etc. The condition developed gradually and doctors say that the problem seems to be in the brain stem. I gather that GABA affects the working of the brain stem.
Does anyone have a link to the actual paper, or more info on this? I hesitate to grind up an Ambien and put it in her G-tube, but even the thought of something that might help her brings tears to my eyes as I write this. You have no idea what it is like to watch your child essentially disintegrate right before your eyes -- it's been 18 years of torture.
Thanks in advance for any help.