Please pay attention library users...

... and the American government!

Terry Pratchett

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."

William James

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices."

Hannah Arendt

"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution."

Aldous Huxley

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

MIRABILIS: Vegetative patient shows signs of awareness

http://www.mirabilis.ca/2006/09/07/vegetative-patient-shows-signs-of-awareness/

I can’t imagine anything worse than finding myself in a hospital, unable to move or communicate. What if those in charge were to deny me food and water in order to hasten my death? After all, that sort of thing has happened to others.
So this article from the NYT is encouraging: Vegetative Patient Shows Signs of Awareness, Study Says.

A severely brain-damaged woman in an unresponsive, vegetative state showed clear signs of conscious awareness on brain imaging tests, researchers are reporting today, in a finding that could have far-reaching consequences for how unconscious patients are cared for and diagnosed.
In response to commands, the patient’s brain flared with activity, lighting the same language and planning regions that are active when healthy people hear the commands. Previous studies had found similar activity in partly conscious patients, who occasionally respond to commands, but never before in someone who was totally unresponsive. [continue]

(I don’t think you’ll need a password in order to read the rest of this article.)

Related

• ‘I felt trapped inside my body’ - BBC
• Vegetative patient ‘communicates’ - BBC
• Vegetative patients may have awareness - mercurynews.com
• Twilight Zone - forbes.com article reprinted at fmri.org