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Brain Electrodes Help Injured Man To Speak Again
An anonymous reader writes "A man beaten and left for dead has recovered the power of speech thanks to the use of electrodes to stimulate brain activity. 'Experts called the results encouraging but cautioned that the experimental treatment must be tried in more patients before its value can be assessed. The researchers are already proceeding with a larger study. Before the electrodes were implanted, the man was in what doctors call a "minimally conscious state." That means he showed only occasional awareness of himself and his environment. In a coma or vegetative state, by contrast, patients show no outward signs of awareness.'"
No.
In Schiavo's case, the autopsy was conclusive. Her brain was horribly atrophied; there was little left beyond the brain stem, which only provides the bare minimum life support functions. Parts of her cerebrum had literally turned to mush. No medical treatment, up to and including science fiction ideas like tissue regeneration, could have properly revived her - there was nothing left of her prior self, in terms of the important stuff like memory, or identity.
At best, some techno-magical resurrection, should such a thing be possible one day, could have left her with an blank infant's mind in an already old body, and bluntly, that sounds every bit like a fate worse than death to me.
Really, the only reason why everyone remembers Terri (and not the many other vegetables whose relatives face the difficult choice of either holding out hope indefinitely or pulling the plug) is that her case got political. Medically, she was not out of the ordinary, and it was pretty clear long before the case ever made it to the public eye that she wasn't coming back. People who've lost most of their brain aren't expected to recover, and since their prognosis worsens over time (due to atrophy), there is little chance of medical science yielding some miracle cure that could help them.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
In most cases, pain is there for a reason. If you're back hurts, you probably did something wrong with your body- lifted something the wrong way, twisted the wrong way, etc. Pain is your bodies way of saying "don't do that". So yes, most of the time the correct answer is to change your life style- stop doing things that harm your body. Its ironic that you complain about doctors using band-aid treatments, then think that a technique to mask the pain from your brain while continuing to deteriorate your body is a *good* idea. In reality its about the worst thing you could do- you'll continue to fuck up your back, without nay feedback of how badly you're doing so. The end result will be you in a wheelchair.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
You're letting your religious beliefs and emotional need to believe something, whether it's true or not, get in the way of the facts. I remember a discussion once about sf spaceships and how scientists have said that it is not possible to go faster than light speed and someone said, "Yeah, but they kept saying it wasn't possible to go faster than sound." The two statements are entirely unrelated. There wasn't "proof" about faster than sound travel. As far was what science can and cannot do, her memories, her personality, everything that made her who she was was lost. Without that, she could never be who she was. That is not an issue of "until recently they thought..." reasoning.
You might want to read up on logic and reasoning and how they are used in debate and discussion because you are making arguments without any basis other than your own beliefs. You are basing your comments on what you want and not on facts or reason.
Actually, that is not the case. If you'll read the article, you'll see that the patient could in fact communicate, albeit in a limited way, before the treatment. He was crippled, but his mind was still there.
If you want an analogy, think of a human being as a computer. This guy, in TFA, had a broken sound card - they fixed it. Terri Schiavo had a broken hard drive - one that wasn't just damaged, but was in fact melted. Assuming the damage could have been repaired, what of the data lost? It's not like we had a backup copy of her mind, her memories, or the other aspects of her identity.
There are bound to be cases where we can argue till the cows come home how much of the mind is left. Hers wasn't one of them. Where the forebrain should have been, there was cerebrospinal fluid. There was nothing left. Her case does not compare with the case in TFA.
Now, one day we may be able to repair that kind of damage. But unless we also develop a method for backing up our minds, the way we back up data on a computer, then such a miracle treatment will not restore the patient to who they were.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.