"PVS" & Ambien

Functional MRI Tests Indicate that this UK "PVS"  Patient Is Aware

Suicide Risk Doubles After Cancer Diagnosis

Oregon Changes "Assisted Suicide" Wording to "Physician Assisted Death"

Infant Euthanasia Practiced in North Korea on Disabled, "Racially Mixed" Children

Boy in “Hopeless” Vegetative State Awakens and Steadily Improves

Pro-Euthanasia Attorney to Head ABA's Bioethics Committee 

Website

PVS & AMBIEN. Several studies are being conducted worldwide on patients thought to be in PVS, using zolpidem (Ambien) which actually wakes up to sixty percent of these patients.

FUNCTIONAL MRI TESTS INDICATE “PVS” PATIENT AWARE. Tests conducted on a 23-year-old, severely brain damaged woman—clinically diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) as the result of a 2005 car accident—have provided researchers with surprising evidence that she is aware but unable to communicate that awareness.

"I was absolutely stunned," remarked lead British researcher Dr. Adrian M. Owen from the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. The tests showed that "she is aware," he said. [LA Times, 9/8/06]

According to the study published in the journal Science, researchers in the U.K. and Belgium conducted functional MRI (fMRI) tests on the woman and compared the scan results with identical tests performed on 34 healthy volunteers.

Unlike ordinary MRI scans which show structural brain damage, the newer, more advanced fMRI tests can measure function in specific regions of the brain.

When researchers gave the woman verbal instructions, the fMRI picked up activity in the same brain areas as seen in scans of the healthy volunteers. When she was told to "imagine playing tennis," her brain fired in the supplementary motor area that controls motor responses. In contrast, when she was asked to "imagine visiting all the rooms in your home, starting from the front door," brain activity was seen in the areas responsible for spacial mental images.

Her test results were indistinguishable from those of the 34 healthy volunteers.

Researchers concluded, "These results confirm that…this patient retained the ability to understand spoken commands and to respond to them through her brain activity, rather than through speech or movement." [Owen et al., "Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State," Science, 9/8/06, p. 1402]

While researchers caution that their study focused on only one patient and their findings cannot be applied to all PVS patients, they also recognize that their protocol is a breakthrough for PVS research.

Dr. Owens said that the type of brain responses the patient had "require the willed, intentional action of the participant." Study co-author Dr. Steven Laureys, from the University of Liege in Belgium, agreed. "The activity in her higher-order cognitive areas means, to me, that she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings," he said. [Wall Street Journal Online, 9/8/06]

Dr. Laureys also pointed out that the findings could mean "the difference between life and death." "From cases in the U.K. and the U.S.," he said, "we know that end-of-life decisions are of course extremely important and this will definitely change the way we deal with these patients. When you have signs of consciousness, you cannot decide to stop hydration and nutrition." [The Guardian (London), 9/8/06] Dartmouth University Medical School neurologist James L. Bernat—a member of the Multi-State Task Force on PVS that, in 1994, codified the diagnosis of PVS—called the study’s findings "a little disturbing." "This suggests there may be things going on inside people’s minds that we can’t assess by interacting with them at the bedside," he said. [Washington Post, 9/8/06; Int’l Task Force Update, v.20, n.4]

SUICIDE RISK DOUBLES AFTER CANCER DIAGNOSIS. Although their overall incidence of suicide is still low, cancer patients are more than twice as likely to take their own lives compared to those in the general population.
That's the sobering finding of a new Canadian study published in the Oct. 19 online issue of the Annals of Oncology.

The report's author says doctors, nurses, social workers and other health professionals need to be alert to the possibility for suicide among cancer patients.

"You have to be aware of this in all cancer patients, but there are some particular patterns," said study author Dr. Wayne Kendal, a radiation oncologist at Ottawa Hospital Regional Cancer Center, in Ontario. "The high-risk patient was male with head or neck cancer or myeloma, advanced stage, with little social or cultural support and limited treatment options."

The lower-risk patient was typically female and black, with breast or colorectal cancer, the researchers found.

To characterize who, among cancer patients, might be at higher risk for suicide, Kendal analyzed 1.3 million cancer cases in the United States.
 A total of 265 females and 1,307 males committed suicide. "Overall, it's a relatively rare event," Kendal said. "It's a fraction of a percent of each [gender]."

"It's pretty rare," echoed Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La. "I've practiced cancer medicine for 20 years, and I have had only three suicides." The rate in the study worked out to be 19 out of every 1,000 male cancer patients and 4 of every 1,000 female patients. The overall rate of suicide was about 24 per 100,000 cancer patients per year, or two to two-and-a-half times that of the general U.S. population.

In this population, males committed suicide at four to five times the rate of females, which is consistent with the suicide rate in the overall American population.

"One of the most striking findings was the gender difference, and that is parallel with the general population," Kendal said. It was unclear why such a difference persisted. The risk of suicide varied according to a number of other factors, including prognosis for the disease, stage of the disease, type of cancer, ethnicity and family situation.
 
Among the study's other findings:
--Males with lung, liver and brain cancer or leukemia had lower rates of suicide than males with other types of cancer.
--Both genders were more likely to commit suicide if their tumors had already spread at the time of diagnosis.
--The highest suicide rate for men was right after diagnosis while, for women, the rate was relatively constant over time.
--Divorced males and females had a higher risk of suicide than married individuals. Married men had about half the risk and married women about a third lower.
--Blacks had a lower risk of suicide, similar to trends in the general population. The rate of suicide among black males was closer to that of female cancer patients.
--Generally speaking, poor prognosis was associated with a higher suicide risk, although this did not hold true for pancreatic cancer. "This was a surprise," Kendal said.
--Refusing surgery or radiation did not appear as a risk factor, although there was a higher risk of suicide when surgery was discouraged, possibly because of more advanced disease.
--Many of the cancers which were associated with a higher risk (for instance, head and neck cancer) also carried with them significant quality-of-life issues. "Surgery can be deforming and, once the cancer comes back, it's much more difficult," Brooks said. "It's very disfiguring."
 
When cancer strikes, social support can be key, Brooks said.
 
"The message I try to tell my patients when you have any type of chronic disease -- and cancer is a chronic disease -- is to try to make sure that they allow the support of the family to help them," Brooks. "I've seen many cases where the husband and wife are divorced, and the ex-wife is there if the man develops cancer. It can be a healing process for both of them." [http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20061019/hl_hsn/suicideriskdoublesaftercancerdiagnosis, 19Oct06, HealthDay News; ed. I found this article quite interesting. It suggests to me that depression might well be one of the greatest factors to people seeking physician assisted suicide.N.ValkoRN]

OREGON UNDER FIRE FOR CHANGING "ASSISTED SUICIDE" WORDING IN REPORTS. Oregon is the only state in the nation to have legalized assisted suicide, but don't call the grisly practice by that name anymore. The state's health department has decided to change the wording of the phrase when referring to the state law -- a move that has pro-life advocates up in arms.
The Oregon Department of Human Services has determined that it will begin referring to "physician assisted suicide" as "physician assisted death" on official reports.

The change comes as backers of the assisted suicide law claim the original term is offensive to those who kill themselves under the statute. In fact, Compassion & Choices, a national group that backs euthanasia and assisted suicide, pressured state officials to make the change.
Gayle Atteberry, the executive director of Oregon Right to Life called the wording difference "outrageous" in comments to the Statesman Journal newspaper.

"They have changed it to a euphemism to make it more palatable," she said. "Do they think it is going to make it easier for people to kill themselves?"
The change may make it easier for those people who kill themselves with a doctor's help to feel good about their actions.

Before she took her own life in August, the newspaper reports that Charlene A. of Salem told the National Press Club, "Please do not call it suicide. That is an insult to my fight against cancer. With cancer, we know when there are no treatment options."

But Mike Gander of Salem, who took care of his son and mother in law while they were dying, told the Statesman Journal the phrase is just a euphemism put forward by those who don't want to confront the reality of what they're doing.

"It's like using the terminology 'choice' when it comes to abortion," he said. "No one wants to use the word 'abortion'; they want to use the word 'choice.' But the terminology -- whether accurate or inaccurate -- still results in the same thing. 'Physician-assisted death' is the same as suicide."
In May, the Senate held a hearing on problems associated with the state's assisted suicide law.

Diane Coleman, president of Not Dead Yet, a leading disability rights group said that the longer the Oregon law stays around the more disabled patients are feeling obligated to end their lives when they become a so-called "burden" to their families.

"What looks to some like a choice to die begins to look more like a duty to die to many disability activists," she said.

Meanwhile, Wesley Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, who is a leading monitor of end of life issues, said the state is poorly monitoring assisted suicide and problems associated with it because it relies on doctors to self-report about the deaths. So far, some 246 people have used the Oregon assisted suicide law to end their lives since it went into effect in 1998.
In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that patients had a right to refuse lifesaving medical treatment and, in 1997, the court ruled unanimously that there is no constitutional right to assisted suicide but that states may ban or allow the practice.
Related: Oregon Right to Life - http://www.ortl.org [LifeNews.com, 17Oct06, http://www.lifenews.com/bio1802.html, Salem, OR]

OREGON CHANGES PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE TERMINOLOGY. A terminally ill patient who ends his or her life under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act will be listed as a "physician-assisted death" instead of suicide, officials said Monday. The one-word change had been sought by advocates of the landmark state law that allows dying patients to ask their doctors to provide medication the patients can administer to themselves to end their lives, if they are capable of making a sound decision.
 
The advocacy group Compassion & Choices said the act, as it is spelled out in Oregon law, "shall not, for any purpose, constitute suicide, assisted suicide, mercy killing or homicide, under the law."
 
The state previously had been using the more common phrase, "physician-assisted suicide," to describe deaths under the act.
 
But now it will use the term physician-assisted death for reports and on the state Web site to "make it consistent with the statute," said Bonnie Widerberg, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Human Services.
 
Katrina Hedburg, with the agency's Public Health Division, said Compassion & Choices did not threaten legal action but did approach the state with its lawyers.
 
"We did not believe it was in the taxpayer's best interest to defend something the statute explicitly says it is not," Hedburg said, adding the change likely will be unpopular with opponents of the act.
 
Supporters of the law argued the term was inaccurate — patients who have fought to stay alive and choose to end their lives are not the same as people otherwise choosing to commit suicide.
 
Voters passed the act in 1994 and rejected an effort to repeal it in 1997, about the same time it was supported by a key U.S. Supreme Court ruling. It was signed into law in 1998 by then-Gov. John Kitzhaber, who is a physician.
[Comment: Ironically, PAD does not automatically imply the consent of the victim as the term "suicide" did. In the interests of real accuracy, how about PAK (physician assisted KILLING)? N.V. From Pam: Well, thank GOODNESS we found a nicer name for it. http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news16/116105124128080.xml&storylist=orlocal]

INFANT EUTHANASIA PRACTICED IN NORTH KOREA ON DISABLED CHILDREN. A North Korean refugee has said [Times] that “racially mixed” babies born in the isolated communist state are regularly killed by doctors. A North Korean doctor, Ri K., told the UK paper that babies conceived by Chinese fathers are targeted in the North Korean government’s racial purity program.

“There are no people with physical defects in North Korea,” Ri said. Such babies were put to death by medical staff and buried quickly, he said at a forum on human rights in Seoul. The revelation follows previous reports that the children of female prisoners in forced labour camps are killed either after or before birth by forced abortion.

A survey conducted by the Korean Bar Association showed that of 100 North Koreans who had defected to the South, over half indicated they had witnessed or heard of imprisoned pregnant women who were forced to have abortions. In 2005 the Office of the United Nations High commissioner for Human Rights included forced abortion and infanticide in its 2005 report on human rights violations in North Korea. A report says that from cradle to grave, “North Korean citizens are surrounded by the all-encompassing presence of the ‘Great Leader’ (the late Kim Il Sung) and his son, the ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong Il.”

The Times quotes one woman, 30-year-old “Han,” who said she was sold into sexual slavery to a Chinese farmer near the Great Wall and caught by Chinese police and deported back to Korea. She has since escaped with assistance from Helping Hands Korea and has testified that her unborn child was killed by Korean prison guards. Related: Report Shows Forced Abortions Routine in North Korea Women’s Prisons
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/oct/06100201.html [White LONDON, 16Oct06 LifeSiteNews.com]

Boy in “Hopeless” Vegetative State Awakens and Steadily Improves. A young boy, who had previously been diagnosed as being in a “permanent vegetative state,” has awakened from a 22 month-long coma and is breathing on his own.

Devon Rivers collapsed in a seizure during a phys-ed class in 2004 and his condition was never explained, though some doctors suggested it was caused by an unknown viral infection. Doctors agreed, however, that he had little hope of recovery. His mother, Carla Rivers, visited him regularly and, in addition to physical therapy by his pediatric nursing home to keep his limbs supple, she talked to him in the belief that coma patients can retain their hearing and some understanding. "For two years the doctors said there was no hope," said Carla Rivers. "Everything that happens in Devon's life is a gain. There's no losses."

Despite the doctors’ gloomy prognosis, eleven year-old Devon is now being prepared for occupational therapy to help him re-learn motor skills and is able to play with his siblings. Doctors cannot explain the reason either for his unexpected awakening or for his steady recovery. In August of this year his mother, Carla Rivers, noticed that he began turning his head to follow movement; instead of a blank stare, he was reacting to his environment.

Days later Devon was breathing without a respirator. Carla Rivers said, “Devon may make a full recovery or what we see today may be what we get…God's plan is greater than ours. There's nothing we can do to force it any sooner or hold it back,” she said. Coma patients and others with severe cognitive disabilities have been labeled “hopeless” only to recover frequently enough that some doctors and ethicists are questioning the accuracy of the diagnosis of “persistent vegetative state” (PVS). The diagnosis is ambiguous in that symptoms of patients can vary greatly and still be called “vegetative.”

A 1996 study published in the British Medical Journal showed that 43% of patients diagnosed with PVS do not qualify for the diagnosis. In 2003, Kate Adamson, a former coma patient who had been diagnosed PVS, appeared on the television talk show the O'Reilly Factor. She said that, like Terri Schiavo, the hospital had removed her feeding tube that was only reinserted after eight days when her lawyer-husband threatened to sue the hospital. Related: Diagnosis of Persistent Vegetative State Questioned as Former Patient Speaks Out http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/nov/03111207.html
[10Oct06, White, OR, LifeSiteNews.com]

Pro-Euthanasia Attorney to Head ABA's Special Bioethics Committee. She also has ties to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. The American Bar Association's (ABA) Special Committee on Bioethics has a new head who is pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia.

Chairwoman Estelle Rogers is the former executive director of the Death with Dignity National Center, a Washington-based organization dedicated to advancing assisted suicide. Teresa Collett, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota, told CitizenLink that Rogers has also been an ardent pro-abortion activist -- having held positions at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Pro-Choice Public Education Project and the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project.

"She has a definite perspective that is contrary to the culture of life," Collett said. "I would suggest she can't help but bring that viewpoint to the chairmanship."

Carrie Gordon Earll [senior analyst, bioethics, Focus on the Family Action] said the ABA's voice on key bioethics issues will be anti-life and anti-marriage under the thumb of Rogers. Earll said society is increasingly dealing with the legal implications of bioethics issues, including physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia and health-care professionals' rights of conscience.

"There's even talk of creating a federal constitutional right to research --  including human cloning -- that could not be reversed by any state body,"  she said. "Those are the sorts of policies we're looking at, as Rogers takes the helm." Collett said the ABA's bioethics committee has not shied away from taking on tough issues. "In fact, in the past year, their program was 'Making the Perfect Baby,' " she said. "They looked specifically at the question of assisted reproductive technology and genetic enhancement."

Make no mistake, the ABA long ago left behind neutrality on issues like abortion, Collett said. "The organization itself has an official position that is opposed to any restrictions throughout pregnancy, even after public debates which cost it thousands of members," she said.  It's conceivable, she added, that we may now see the ABA adopt even more aggressive positions as it files friend-of-the-court briefs or testifies before Congress on bioethical issues. 

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst at Focus on the Family Action, said the ABA, once considered the voice of the legal community, is no longer the top professional association for attorneys -- and it shows. "The ABA is basically becoming a left-wing, radical, special-interest group, promoting far-left ideals and morals," he said. 

Imagine what might have happened, he said, if the new chairwoman had been a pro-life, anti-euthanasia activist attorney who had worked for pro-family legal groups, such as Americans United for Life or the American Center for Law and Justice. "There would be an outcry from the left like you wouldn't believe,"  Hausknecht said. "There would be public news conferences and calls for the removal of and resignation of those individuals responsible for such an outrageous appointment. That's how the left would have handled such an appointment."
American Bar Association 321 North Clark Street Chicago, IL 60610 (312) 988-5000  [28Aug06, Pete Winn, http://www.family.org/cforum/extras/a0041801.cfmhttp://www.family.org/cforum/extras/a0041801.cfm, Focus on the Family (800) A-FAMILY (232-6459)]

EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDE Kenneth J. Simcic, M.D., FACP, FACE: http://home.earthlink.net/~simcic/