Posted by PS on March 26, 2005 at 13:43:56:
In Reply to: Conflict of interest posted by PS on March 26, 2005 at 13:42:31:
We have had personal experience in a case like this in the early 90's in California. We had a friend who went to our church who was beaten outside a pool hall, with his head repeatedly smashed into the concret sidewalk. He was in a coma for some time, and the doctors all concurred that he was brain-dead with no chance of recovery. When we would visit him, he would respond by kicking one of his legs to acknowledge our presence. His heartbeat on the monitor also visibly increased when we were present. When we would have to leave, he would squeeze our hands and really start kicking like crazy. The nurses on duty all just said we were mistaking meaningless muscular spasms for recognition.
Finally, they located his vagrant alcoholic mother who had long since deserted him. She quickly made the decision to unplug him from the respirator, and we were denied any further access to him by her order; she hated Christians. I could not even get in as a pastor, due to her explicit orders. The fact that I was Protestant and the hospital was Catholic did not help, either. The chaplain there thought little of evangelical Protestants, but he did tell us that we had the right to wait in the waiting rooms for the termination of life support which was scheduled a couple days later. We started round the clock prayer vigils. We lined the halls of the hospital outside intensive care and continued in prayer till the day he was to be unplugged. With only a few hours to go, he woke up. He eventually made a full recovery and was attending church again when we left California. So much for doctors who think they can determine brain death. So much for those who think muscles flexing and changes in vital signs are not responses and mean nothing.
Thus, my conclusions are based both on personal experience and ethical sensibilites. Based on my ethical sensibilities, I believe that in the absence of the testimony of the patient's wishes in a living will, we should always err on the side of life and hope. When a loved one or guardian purports to communicate the wishes of the patient, there should at least be a evaluation of that person's own competence, bias, and possible conflict of interests.
Based on personal experience, I do not trust medical science's ability to certainly determine the absence of all hope of recovery, nor its ability to determine that the comatose/vegetative person has no perception of events around him/her, nor its characteristic attribution of observed physical responses to coincidental unconscious muscle jerks. I also believe in the power of God above the most certain diagnosis.
The medical professionals' bias is most precisely a response to their own lack of ability to help a patient rather than the lack of the possibility of recovery, per se. They equate the two, and thus cannot make the distinction. Those cases where comatose patients have awakened cannot be attributed to any medical procedure; our technology sustained the patient's life until the healing occured, but the healing itself was not the result of our efforts. To recognize such cases would be to include another real empirical criterion in the scientific evaluation--whether a patient in such a state has ever recovered. The answer is yes, and there are numerous examples. But because they are not the clear result of any medical procedure, the medical professional will not include such data in the evaluation of the hope of recovery. They exclude the exceptional and anomalous cases, which are really just the cases beyond their control and their understanding. What they cannot understand or effect are not accepted as valid criteria in evaluating the possibility of recovery.
In conclusion, it is not faith in an unprecedented miracle that is needed; such recoveries are not unprecedented. What is needed is simply an unbiased consideration of all relevant cases. It is the bias against the acknowledgement of God's intervention that precludes the consideration of anomalous recoveries not effected by medical procedure. "We have never healed such a person, so she cannot be healed. Therefore we will declare her to be dead, and treat her accordingly."