Letters to the Editor
blunderdog
Published Letters: 494 Editor's Choice: 10
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Great Topic and Comments
[Read the article: The light's on, but is anybody home?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So, thanks candide, the first thing they need to do is repeat the experiment asking yes/no questions of the patient.
And yes, the same should be done with people known to be in what all "know" as an unconscious state--sleep or anesthesia. Thanks to the very not-dense Espadre.
If MRIs become cheap and easy to build and use, the world changes.
A feedback system as suggested by Judas Gutenberg between a conscious person and the fMRI scanner could even be hooked up to perfectly healthy people. Make it a mental exercise-set for anyone who wants it. There'd be a way to put this ability to terrific use for anyone these days. Controlling a computer (even in rudimentary ways) with your imagination is technologically close to telekinesis.
...the cerebral cortex (the areas in which fMRI activity were recorded) are clearly NOT the seat of consciousness." -True2Blue
This appears to be true, but only because all increasing evidence suggests that there IS NO "seat of consciousness" in a localized region of the brain. A correct fact which makes no point about the study or the questions.
...the difference between a brain that is injured but largely intact, and one in which the cerebral cortex is virtually gone... --Mishima666
Yes, fMRI'ing Schiavo should eventually prove when there's nothing working--ie, no person there--once we figure out more of the details of the effects.
We’re considering the possibility that this woman retains a high level of thought /information processing. --Robbie
I think this is totally unjustified inference. If the woman was a lifelong devout tennis player, hearing the words "playing tennis" could very well fire up a lot of brain function that have nothing to do with with "thought/information processing." It sure would be nice to see more details about the actual data from the study in a longer piece.
Hospitals routinely use paralytics to put people into "artificial" comas in hopes of treating various illnesses, but how many such individuals eventually are "switched off" life-support when they take a turn for the worse -- infections that can't be controlled, organ failures etc.? --anonymous
The question in those cases should be whether it's ethical to bring people out of those comas solely for the purpose of experiencing horrific suffering until death. A good point is raised in this: how many people express their wishes about physical suffering while healthy? The classic war movie scene where someone asks Sarge to shoot him to spare him the suffering of gruesome wounds comes to mind. Could you state in a living will your wish that in your final hours, you be spared as much physical discomfort as possible, even if that means "letting" you die when consciousness might be present?
...person whose brain was running, but they had absolutely no ability for voluntary movement--not eye blinking, head turning, or any of the other forns of communication required by the neurologists represented in this piece. That was fiction, but maybe it was also the truth." --TrueBlue
There are several drugs that put people in this state. Completely conscious full-body paralysis. That's easy. The person's body has to be put on a ventilator so it breathes.
I do think the piece ends on an inappropriate down note. Interesting things to study are nothing but goodness for medical science. Hopefully no one will ban such research for religious reasons.
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@SomeNYGuy around noon
[Read the article: Douglas Schoen and Hillary's slimy pollsters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bloody "Dexter" fountain at the recruiting office. I work right near Grand Central, and was until recently in the Garment District a few blocks North of MSG.
Walking around the streets of NYC generally, and Manhattan more specifically, there's always a small part of me deep inside that's screaming.
You nailed that.
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@ Jim Montague -- Are you KIDDING?
[Read the article: "Nazis" and "Hitler" -- the Right's casual, trivializing political insults]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And one last point I feel compelled to point out. I’ve never met a real social-welfare state leftist who could answer the following question without having to think real hard: “Aside from the murder and genocide, what exactly don’t you like about National Socialism?”
Gads I hope so.
Aside from the genocide and anti-Semitism, what WERE the tenets of "National Socialism"?
Forgive me for calling you out here, but seriously, I studied the Nazi rise to power in '30's Germany a bit, and I don't recall any clear exposition of a "platform" of the Nazi party. In Mein Kampf, Hitler demonstrated pretty well that he a smart (and insane) guy who didn't have a clue how to run the country.
If we're allowed to construct the "platform" from hindsight, it looks like a pretty typical fascist (corporatist) dictatorship in which the population is completely marginalized by a military police state.
So...were you joking? Or have all the "social-welfare state leftists" you ever asked been idiots with no education?
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Thanks, Jim, and Sorry!
[Read the article: "Nazis" and "Hitler" -- the Right's casual, trivializing political insults]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You can lay that quote on Jonah Goldberg...
Whew. Sorry about that.
Yeah, I see now--I just got a bit confused about the quoted text.
(I don't care enough to have responded about whatever it is Jonah Goldberg has to say.)