Communicating While in Coma – Would New Findings Have Helped Terri Schiavo?

Next month marks the fifth anniversary of the starvation death of Terri Schindler Schiavo. It is both a vindication and a tragedy that new testing reveals some patients diagnosed as being in a “persistent vegetative state” can comprehend what is being said and answer simple questions. This in spite of their outward appearance of being unaware of their surroundings.

The Schindler family (Terri’s mother, father, brother and sister) begged for such tests to be done on Terri. The villain in the Schiavo case was and continues to be Judge Greer who never gave Terri a fighting chance. Greer refused the family’s request for sophisticated brain scanning. In the words of Wesley Smith, “I will go to my grave believing the judge knew what he didn’t want to know.” That Terri could indeed comprehend what was going on around her.

Beyond Terri, this new research has profound medical and ethical implications for patients who languish in a state in which they appear to lack awareness. Many decisions to remove life support systems, even feeding tubes, have been made based on the seemingly hopeless “persistent vegetative state” of the patient. Why allow the person to languish, they argue, when they have lost their humanity? Let them die a “dignified” death.

When Rom Houben, a Belgian man, “woke up” 23 years after being in a diagnosed PVS state and related that he was conscious that whole time, many scoffed and attempted to undermine this man’s experience and the findings of the medical people working with Houben. The new study gives further evidence that some patients really do have an “inner voice.”

“We were astonished when we saw the results of the patient’s scan and that he was able to correctly answer the questions that were asked by simply changing his thoughts,” said Dr. Adrian Owen who is the co-author of the new study. “Not only did these scans tell us that the patient was not in a vegetative state but, more importantly, for the first time in five years it provided the patient with a way of communicating his thoughts to the outside world. We can be pretty confident that he is entirely conscious. He has to understand the instructions, comprehend speech, and then make a decision.”

These findings open up a whole new universe in the thinking of the medical community and the decisions made by families. Most importantly, the findings breathe new life and hope into patients who cling to consciousness not evident to the outside world.

Barbara Lyons