He also cautioned against giving false hope to families, noting the small percentage of the responsive patients. All the study’s patients had suffered traumatic brain injuries, not damage from oxygen deprivation.
Speaking of the 29-year-old patient, Monti said “it is still the case that we managed to give him, to a little extent, a voice. In a sense there was a very positive outcome. We managed to interact. This is an extremely exciting thing."
CNA sought comment on the issue from Bobby Schindler of the Terri Schiavo Foundation.
His sister Terri, who was severely brain damaged from oxygen deprivation, was at the center of a 2005 legal dispute in Florida. She was denied nutrition and hydration by court order in a case between her blood relatives and her husband.
Schindler said the study backs other findings about the “unscientific, inaccurate” diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state (PVS) and shows how it is “often” wrong when diagnosing people with severe injuries.
“As in the case of my sister, they’re using this diagnosis as a criterion to kill.”
Schindler said his family had asked a judge for similar testing for Terri but it was denied.
If the technique was easy to conduct and available, he said, it would have given a better understanding of her condition. “Why not ask, especially when it is going to end someone’s life?”
Asked whether the case offers insight into how unresponsive patients should be treated, he replied:
“Nobody should have to earn the right to hydration. We should do everything we can to care for these people, regardless of how responsive or unresponsive they are.”
Schindler lamented that people are being “indoctrinated” to see killing as “an act of compassion.”
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“We are morally obligated to care for these people,” Schindler told CNA.
“They should stop any further dehydration deaths, because we’re learning how inaccurate the PVS diagnosis is.”
Discussing the other patients who could not communicate, he said families of unresponsive patients should continue to treat them with “love and compassion.”
But the patient’s condition should never justify removing food, hydration or “basic care,” he stressed.
Schindler also noted that improvements on science are possible and could improve unresponsive patients’ functioning.
“We should never come to the conclusion that someone is better off starving to death,” he told CNA.