Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Terri's News Alert:

Terrisnewsalert_new

Cracks Start to Show in ‘Vegetative State’ Diagnosis 


July 11, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After years of opposition from disability advocates, more experts are beginning to question the validity of the “persistent vegetative state” (PVS) diagnostic label that paved the way for Terri Schiavo’s starvation death. 

A Discover magazine article published online July 6 explained that PVS often fails to account for a broad swath of traumatic brain injury patients who are deemed to be “still in there” - a conclusion one science reporter called “haunting.” 

Discover’s Kat McGowan examined the outcome of years of experiments by Dr. Joseph Giancino, director of rehabilitation neuropsychology at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and Nicholas Schiff, a Weill Cornell Medical Center neurologist, as they probed the distinction between reflexes and “real cognition” in patients who appear to have little communion with the outside world. 

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