Man recovers after 19-year coma.
"When Terry Wallis’s pick-up truck crashed through a barrier on a mountain road, plunging into a dry river bed, doctors gave the teenager little chance of survival. The accident, which killed one of his companions, left him with severe head injuries, in a coma and paralysed from the neck down.
That was in 1984. Mr Wallis, a farmer’s son from Arkansas, remained in a minimally conscious state (MCS) and outwardly unresponsive for years, until doctors witnessed what they have described as a medical miracle. In 2003, after 19 years, Mr Wallis called out to his mother and asked for a can of Pepsi.
Scientists from Cornell University, New York, believe that a slow process of brain repair and neural reconnection prompted Mr Wallis’s recovery.
A study of the structure of his brain has revealed that neuronal cells in relatively undamaged areas have grown important connections over a period of years."
Hillsborough victim Tony Bland was deliberately starved to death by doctors. Four years later, another Hillsborough 'PVS' victim, Andrew Devine, had recovered enough to be able to communicate.
I'm sure there's a good reason why the people who support starving people like Tony Bland and Andrew Devine to death are the same people who consider that executing murderers is an affront to a civilised society. Just can't quite see what it is.
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3 comments:
"I'm sure there's a good reason why the people who support starving people like Tony Bland and Andrew Devine to death are the same people who consider that executing murderers is an affront to a civilised society. Just can't quite see what it is."
Um ... They're all to the left of the political spectrum. Damnit, Laban, I'd have thought you of all people should have known the answer to that one. ;)
Actually Laban poses an interesting question, the "why do they think that?" part.
What could be wrong with say executing a depraved murderer after a proper trial and due process?
As opposed to what is right about withdrawing life support to an innocent person causing their death?
Now I can accept that someone might say both are wrong; not my view, but an arguable and a consistent view based on an all killing is wrong view.
Alternatively one can say both are right which would be my view.
But to say it's OK to end innocent life, shows you have no compulsion about ending life, but to then oppose the execution of criminals is just absurd and perverted. Unless you hold something other than human life in higher regard. So if say you rate resources higher than human life then people in comas are taking up resources that rate higher than human life so refusing to feed these people doesn't matter. Although that doesn't explain letting off the murderers.
Perhaps it's the old story of killing the innocent: "14 And Pilate saith to them: Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more: Crucify him. 15 And so Pilate being willing to satisfy the people, released to them Barabbas, and delivered up Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified."
No, I lean more to the opinion that it's because they are hypocrites....
...though I suppose 'to the left of the political spectrum' does seem to mean the same thing, these days.
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