Last week, my email and blog alerts let me know about a “new” article on research into consciousness. Wesley Smith posted his entry on an article describing the activity of researchers in the UK seeking to reduce the 40% error rate in diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. Alex Schandenberg also featured the article and commented on it.
Turns out the article isn’t new, but was published in December of last year. I’m not sure how it got Wesley’s attention now instead of then. But I am grateful. I wasn’t near a computer much in December last year and would probably have missed this even if he or others had written about it.
“The Undead,” published in The Times, is simply the best discussion of the complexities of researching human consciousness that I’ve seen in the media. As anyone who follows these issues knows, there has been periodic attention given to research involving the differences between people in persistent vegetative state and those in a “minimally conscious” state the U.S. media as well as the UK. This article really stands out.
Rather than excerpting a lot of it – both Wesley and Alex have done an excellent job of pulling some intriguing pieces out of the story and commented on them – I want to highlight something that hasn’t gotten the attention of others – so far.
Toward the end of the article, European researcher Steven Laureys makes some assertions that would sound radical and alarmist coming from someone like me:
According to Steven Laureys, professor of neurology at Liège University, there is constant pressure in many parts of the developed world to withdraw sustenance from vegetative patients in order to allow them to die so that their body parts can be harvested. In a recent study, Laureys reports, “slightly less than half of surveyed US neurologists and nursing-home directors believed that patients in a vegetative state could be declared dead”. His remarks should be set against the background of widespread shortages of organs and body parts for transplantation. (Emphasis added.)
I am not familiar with the study that Laureys mentions, but would appreciate it if anyone could direct me to it.
The comments by Laureys may seem shocking, but they’re only shocking in the way that anyone who points out the “elephant in the living room” is shocking (e.g. the big thing that everyone knows but nobody talks about, like an actively alcoholic family member).
The pressure surrounding organ harvesting was a factor in the gruesome death of Ruben Navarro. Organ donation has also been an element of more than one “rush to judgment” case – or, as doctors prefer to call them “miracle recoveries” – more on this topic here and here.
Whether or not the sentiments expressed by Laureys are true – and I suspect that there are large numbers of ethicists and physicians who would deny that it’s the case – the important thing is to actually discuss these things. Is the push to withhold or withdraw treatment from people with cognitive impairments really all about what their wishes were or about medical standards of futility?
We’re not having that discussion here in the U.S., because we’re not discussing the implications consciousness research might – or should – have on life-ending decisions.
More on that tomorrow. –Stephen Drake