190 replies to this topic

[emerson]

And to lighten the mood... NOT, a link to a web-comic about a psycho killer, who did a special on Terri :

http://www.choppingb...d/20050321.html

Jean

I thought that one was funny, and I'm slowly heading foreward from the first comic on after seeing it. But man, I gotta say, the Godwin award winning one on the main page is among the most overboard reactions I've seen to this Schiavo fiasco yet from either side.

[FutureQ]

**repost of deleted Malchiah post**  [Thank you Comos!  DonS]
He did not want to spend the necessary funds on someone he hasn't loved in over a decade, and he stands to gain financially by her death.

This is bullshit. There was no insurance for award on death. The million dollar award for her care from a malpractice lawsuit was not touchable by Michael by order of the court and only to be used for her care. It is long gone. What do you think hospice care for 15 years costs? There was nothing to rehabilitate but Michael tried noneheless until it was proven futile. He was awarded 300 thousand personally for inability to have relations with his wife also from the malpractice suit. He didn't have to wait for her to die to get that. Lastly a neocon wack job pro-life/anti-abortion lawyer offered Michael ten million dollars to release custody to her parents. If profit was his motive why in hell did he pass that up?

I'm really sick of all the ignorance and misinformation i this case. But most of all I am sick of all the lack of logic on the part of anyone buying into the Shindler's schtick.

1. They supported Michael when seeking the lawsuit for malpractice and testified to his good nature and love for terri and good care of her. Were they lying then or are they lying now? It's one of those, you choose.

2. They [a growing number of the Shindler right wing wacko supporters] claim he strangled her and the chemcial imbalance results from artifact of the strangulation caused heart failure. But the Shindlers again supported the lawsuit which said chemical imbalance from eating disorder caused heart failure.
a. Why did they agree to this diagnosis then but change their minds later? One of those times is a lie.
b. Who beliieves for a second that the malpractice accused doctor's attonys would not have pounced on something like the artifact crap if it would save their client?
c. We are to beleive 19 courts of however many appeals simply shine on an accusation such as strangulation and never do a thing to investigate?

There's no logic here people!

I could go on and on but I'm sick and tired of this whole thing now. What so called self professed Immortalists need to remember is that the government, this right wing nutball goverment, will use any excuse to shove their religious dogma down your throats and deny you your liberties especially the right to self deanimate in an effort to in fact save your own life through Cryo preservation or if available mind upload before identity loss ensuing brain damage matures. Those of you on the wrong side of the fence here are shooting your own toes off and the ricochet is hitting ours!

FQ

[DJS]

I'm sorry, but if I see this thread pop up on the active topics list again I think I'm going to vomit. I'm beyond "sick of it".

[FutureQ]

Why has the option of cryonics not been included in the debate over what to do about Terry Chiavo?  It's the one option that would give both sides what they say they are seeking:  It would end whatever suffering she may be experiencing, which her husband seeks, AND it would preserve the possibility of Terry's future recovery (something which may in fact be MORE compromised by keeping her in a vegetative state than a cryonically preserved state,) which is the hope that Terry's parents are holding on to.

Both the parents and the husband are currently seeking ends that are arguably tragic. I can think of no more compelling circumstance in which the option of cryonics is so clearly the best available option.

Because Cryonics purports to save the brain so to save the identity/personality of the indivdual. Pretending to save someone no longer having identity makes a mockery of Cryonics and fouls it's reputation even more than it currently is. If we want to be taken seriously we must avoid appearing as clowns.

FQ

[FutureQ]

I'm sorry, but if I see this thread pop up on the active topics list again I think I'm going to vomit.  I'm beyond "sick of it".

I guess I'm just punctuality challenged. I didn't know it had a time limit. My bad.

FQ

Edited by FutureQ, 05 April 2005 - 07:05 PM.

[DJS]

Your supposition Future Q, is that there is nothing left to save.

I am not entirely sure of this fact, but I'll let the audience decide.

I guess you've come along late to this discussion, but speaking personally, I have been completely saturated by this Terri case.

PS -- Don't take offense. I'm just being playful.

[FutureQ]

Your supposition Future Q, is that there is nothing left to save.

I am not entirely sure of this fact, but I'll let the audience decide.

I guess you've come along late to this discussion, but speaking personally, I have been completely saturated by this Terri case.

PS --  Don't take offense.  I'm just being playful. 

Didn't you note my playfulness? No offense taken. Besdes I guess I've said my piece, well except that I am a quadriplegic and intensely outraged at the blatant usury of the disabled community by power mongering neocons. When first hurt they [doctors] put me in the head injury ward for lack of space in the spinal ward. I got first hand knowledge of what brain injury does, 24/7 shrieking and worse. I'm also educated and have followed the Schiavo case for years. I must go with the preponderance of evidence as is used in civil trials. It overwhelmingly falls on the side of 'nothing left to save'. No cerebrum means no "you" inside, so says modern medicine. So I guess my supposition is girded by good evidence and knowledge.

Ok, last post, I think.

FQ

Edited by FutureQ, 13 April 2005 - 01:43 AM.

[Mind]

I'll probably regret opening this up again, but a new case made think about the issue. In case you don't want to re-read this thread, my thoughts at the time were: "If the parents want to assume all legal and financial responsibility for Shaivo, why not let it happen". I couldn't figure out why the husband in the case and so many members here were in the DIE, DIE, DIE camp.

Anyway, here is a really sad story of an abused girl who was put in a coma due to criminal child abuse. After a doctors proclaimed she was in a permanent vegetative state, the state granted permission to social services to end her life. A day before they were going to "pull the plug", the girl started breathing on her own, and now she is responding to stimuli.

Girl is improving - Boston Globe

twisting the knife with townhall - Malkin

Jack Egan, a Springfield lawyer for the girl's stepfather, said yesterday's medical news confirms their view that DSS was too hasty in determining that Haleigh's condition was irreversible. He noted that DSS asked the courts to withdraw life support after Haleigh had been in the hospital for less than a month.

[randolfe]

Yes, it did divide Imminst members. Interestingly, most of those who voted felt pulling the plug was wrong. I was among them.

However, now that we have the autopsy report and know that her mind had simply disintegrated, I would vote less enthusiastically against pulling the plug.

These cases are often managed and manipulated affairs. With the Pope, I thought it was interesting that they kept him alive with dialysis, etc. for a few days. It seemed to me that with his death a certainty, the Church literally orchestrated his death in a manner that allowed millions of believers to pout into Rome. It also allowed all the politicians behind the scene mount their campaigns to be chosen the new Pope.

I haven't been on this thread for months. I might be repeating my own experience here but it is a story worth retelling...

Aunt Eleanor, a friend of mine, had liver disease caused by alcoholism. Over a year before she ended up in the hospital in a coma, the doctors told her that she had "thirty days to live".

Aunt Eleanor decided that she just "wanted to have fun" for as long as possible. She continued to travel, drink and party.

In the hospital, the doctor told her children that Aunt Eleanor could not be revived and if she was revived, she would be a living vegetable. They waited for two or three days so all the family could gather at her bedside for "pulling the plug".

They pulled the plug. Instead of dying, Aunt Eleanor woke up a few hours later. Upon learning that her kids had pulled the plug on her, she because furious and accused them of trying to kill her.

She lived for several more months, perhaps it was even a couple more years. But I always think of Aunt Eleanor when people talk about pulling the plug.

That seems to be the case with this new case that Mind lists above. I couldn't help but think of Aunt Eleanor when I read that story. I think we over-estimate the ability of doctors to predict individual human being's state of mind.

Indeed, most of them would assure you that there would be "no mind" to revive from cryonic suspension. I don't think those who feel cryonics is their only hope would embrace that idea.

I hope that Mind or others will keep us updated on the eventual outcome of this new case. If this person recovers and is normal, it will be a sober reminder of how "wrong" medical doctors can be!

[eternaltraveler]

if they are actually aware in that state that is the worst hell I can imagine.

[Lazarus Long]

(Prometheus)
Is it murder now?

No.

Ironically this is the first case that came to my mind when I read this earlier today and I came to a totally different conclusion based both on this study and the information in the Terri Schiavo case. You see much of the same areas of the brain being examined in this study didn't even exist in Terri's case. The post mortem described most of her brain tissue to be dead and non functional at all. BTW fMRI's used during the arguments over the case also provided that conclusion and the pathology afterward confirmed it. Her brain was largely dark, and filled with gaping shadowed voids.

The issue in Terri's case was not just the vegetative state, it was the extensive deterioration and *death* of her neural tissues. The person we call Terri was no longer there to return, her body was largely operating on autonomic despite some reactivity and anyway those reactions were not particularly toward the end of her life. This is a sensitive issue and debate and will always provoke strong emotions.

BTW, her husband insisted that she had told him of her wishes and the parents disagreed. The legal issue was also about determinant custody and the husband's relationship topped the parents in the case of adults with no extenuating circumstances.

[Lazarus Long]

Prometheus you are correct about the fMRI but the CAT and MRI were supportive. However please read pages 12 through 15 of the PDF for the official autopsy that reference the actual neuropathology and go on to suggest that her neural tissues were capable of being recovered by either current technology or even some of the hypothetical advances you are being optimistic about over the next five or maybe even ten years.

PDF of the autopsy report

[Lazarus Long]

For the record the pathologists' reports states on pg 16 of the PDF in the commentary that:

Comment: Brain weight is an important index of its pathological state.  Brain weight is correlated with height, weight, age, and sex.  The decedent's brain was grossly abnormal and weighed only 615 grams (1.35lbs). That weight is less than half of the expected tabular weight for a decedent of her adult age of 41 years 3 months 28 days. By way of comparison, the brain of Karen Ann Quinlan weighed 835 grams at the time of her death, after 10 years in a similar persistent vegetative state.

[Lazarus Long]

Did you read the rest of the autopsy Prometheus?

The extent of the damage was extensive and to virtually all parts of the brain and even to the stem. It wasn't just the CAT and MRI that support the claim but the post mortem. Her brain tissue was deteriorated to the point where much of it had been replaced by spinal fluid in a hydrocephalic ex vacuo state. It was literally like swiss cheese and not merely containing one single lesion, but multiple lesions in virtually all major and many minor areas of her brain including the brain stem.

The author makes a good point about the difference between clinical diagnosis and pathological ones and the the vague aspects of the clinical diagnosis of a PVS on page 17 of the PDF. He does not consider PVS to be a pathological diagnosis. In fact he closes the report with these words:

"Neuropathological examination alone of the decedent's brain - or any brain, for that matter - cannot prove or disprove a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state or minimally conscious state."

The argument you are making about the outdated conclusion is inappropriate in this instance as there is sufficient pathology to support the initial diagnosis and not the extension you (and no doubt many others) are attempting to make to Terri.

Read the complexity and widespread nature of the damage and then rather than fixating on criticizing only the *clinical diagnosis* return to the actual pathology and suggest a remedy. Hindsight is 20/20 but in this case there is considerable evidence to support the clinical diagnosis and not extrapolate to the cases such as described in the study.

BTW why don't you bring up some of the *numerous cases* you mention because in the report he mentions some of them and points out as few as four that ever recovered from specific comparable injury to the brain of only one of the types that Terri suffered from. Four is not *numerous*.

The study you have introduced to this discussion is appropriate not so much as repudiation of the original clinical diagnosis but as an example of how the growing body of data and methodology for a *pathological diagnosis* of PVS may yet become possible.

Furthermore:

a) how much of the brain in used for motor and sensory functions versus cognitive processes and memory encoding.

True but irrelevant to the specific damage to this patient. The damage was so pervasive as to include large regions providing for both the motor function and memory

b) numerous cases of hydrocephaly where brain mass is reduced by as much as 50% of normal with no functional deficit

When intervention is providing in a reasonable time and the remaining brain tissue is still functionally intact but simply impaired due to the excess fluid and repair is achieved by the the removal of it.

In this instance the damage to the brain was already done as the condition had existed and deteriorated for over a decade and her brain tissue had degenerated to the point where critical tissues had been replaced or did not exist.

c) The intervention of hemispherectomy (the surgical removal of one entire hemisphere of the brain).

Again a totally irrelevant procedure to offer for this case because she didn't have a good side to preserve. I am aware of the possibility of the removal of one hemisphere but that presumes the damage is localized to it and the remaining hemisphere is still sufficiently functional to assume total responsibility for neurological function.

Respectfully Prometheus, it is somewhat disingenuous to keep extrapolating from the general case to her specifics and then continuously ignore ALL the specifics of her case.

[FutureQ]

now that we have the autopsy report and know that her mind had simply disintegrated

This is not directed at you Randolf, but to those who voted to "pull the plug": certain regions of her cortex were found to have degenerated dramatically, yes- but why do we have such difficulty, however, entertaining the notion that advanced neuroregenerative stem cell procedures would be able to restore significant function in the future? Were that possible, Terri would recover, albeit with substantial amnesia, but still recover.

It is damnably hypocritical that some of us seem comfortable indulging our fantasies of near future technology in the form of SENS but when it comes to a patient like Terri they can be so quick to slot themselves in the myopically conservative faction.

I think you have a particular disorder Prometheus. You are unrepentantly a contrarian. Anything that you can oppose you will just to get to hear your own voice or words in this case.

Fantasy? The real fantasy is that you think she'd only have substantial amnesia. Point of fact if a brain were to have been regenerated in her skull there'd still have been nothing of HER there. It would be the same as a clone or twin with no memories to boot. Where is the value to Terri herSELF in that? None mister!

THE LAST THING THE FIELD OF CRYONICS NEEDS IS THE EGREGIOUSLY BAD PR WE'D GET FROM ENTERTAINING THE SUSPENSION OF SUCH HOPELESS CASES. We must maintain some amount of respectability.

SENS a fantasy? Oh that's rich, I suppose you are now a microbiologist gerontologist and an engineer, right?

Why don't you piss off somewhere and leave us in peace. You certainly don't in my opinion show the hallmarks of actually being an immortalist/life extensionist. Are you signed up for cryonics? Hmm, I seem to recall you are contrarian to that too. Are you practicing CR, taking any of the recommended supplements?

These are rhetorical. I think your constant harping has shown well enough without need of answering these that you don't truly support the movement, you oppose it at every turn by all the evidence. You are at best a troll, at worst an enemy within our gates.

FQ

[bgwowk]

The recent fMRI results suggest that the particular subject they were performed on was tragically "locked in" (Google it) rather than pure PVS. It shouldn't surprise us that aphasia, apraxia, locked in syndrome and PVS (of varying depths of residual consciousness) exist on a continuum depending on the extent of brain injury and subsequent cerebral atrophy. This study suggests that some patients diagnosed with PVS might fall closer to the "locked in" part of the continuum. It in no way implies that ALL patients diagnosed with PVS have hidden conscious lives, especially those with grossly atrophied brains.

Why, Prometheus, is such a large contingent of people, including immortalists, taking the husband's side of the Terri Schiavo debate? Some of it is no doubt generalized backlash against the Religious Right for sake of dislike of the Religious Right. But there is a deeper reason you should consider. People want to be aided by, not assaulted by medicine. How many people in their heart-of-hearts suspected that maybe Terry Schiavo was in some minimally conscious state over which she had no control (however medically questionable that might be)? How many people were repulsed by the horror of that thought, and motivated by the desire that they themselves never be forced to live in such a state by others forcing their values on them? I bet a lot.

Where cryonics and future technologies are concerned, you are absolutely right that in principle you could repair the brain of anyone in a persistent vegetative state (or any other brain-injured state) and place whatever memories remained from the original person into a new healthy brain. In such repair scenarios, survival itself exists on a continuum rather than the binary life/death dichotomy of popular culture.

But here also we have the famous ethical dilemma of cryonics. On the one hand, if repair (or at least stabilization) means are at hand, it can be argued that everybody should be treated regardless of extent of injury to always err on the side of survival. On the other hand, cryonics draws ethical criticism for taking money to cryopreserve people in poor biological condition. This is why almost every relative who calls a cryonics organization on behalf of someone who has already legally died is turned away. The resolution is for everyone to decide what they really want when they are still healthy. I personally don't want to be maintained in a living state if I am highly compromised neurologically (including locked in syndrome, and certainly PVS). I would want to be cryopreserved as soon as possible. Also, I would want cryopreservation to proceed even if my "remains" were highly damaged. Because I have stated this wish in advance, and have saved money through life insurance in advance, there would nothing unethical about such a cryopreservation.

[bgwowk]

Prometheus wrote:

I cannot speak for the horror as you describe of being "locked in", but if it were possible to induce a coma, for example, in an individual that is otherwise suffering in order that they may be kept on life support until such time as an intervention is possible, then isn't this better than death?

Yes, I agree. I would regard that as a default assumption for anyone who had not previously expressed wishes otherwise. How such care, whether cryonics or otherwise, should be paid for is a separate question.

[Lazarus Long]

For the record Brian (and anyone else in leadership) when this happens, and it does from time to time by hitting the edit key when scrolling up and thinking you are editing your own post, the very first thing to do even if you have entered the edit is to just very carefully back up in your browser (IE6).

I find that when you jump back using the drop down to the edit page the text will appear as it did when you changed it *BUT* if you look below the text will appear as it did before you did. If it doesn't then try a careful time jump even farther back to the past to when you first went to reply and you might discover that the browser has still preserved the data.

This will not work across open windows but it works better if multiple windows are open. It also will not work if you have rebooted as this usually causes a temp dump. Also sometimes this procedure will work better if you first go to the work offline function and see if the original text is still available in your browser window's history for that day. This also will not work across multiple browser windows but it does work inside the window where you entered the post.

If you haven't yet closed the original window Brian you might try that and see if the data is still recoverable. Also any other leader that has this page in their their browser might be able to still back track to the original text and copy/paste the repair. Good luck.

BTW, I did try but I had already closed the original browser window this thread was in and had lost the data.

[bgwowk]

Thanks for the tips, Laz. Unfortunately I already closed the browser. Fortunately the message was not very long, and I think Prometheus' position remains clear notwithstanding.