Friday, October 06, 2006

Brain-Injury Patients Should be Used for Medical Experiments, Suggest Bioethicists

So, yeah, there's no slippery slope at all is there. Brain-Injury Patients Should be Used for Medical Experiments, Suggest Bioethicists
Dr. Steven Curry of the University of Melbourne, who supports experiments using PVS patients, said it would be too difficult to convince the public that PVS patients were “dead”, according to commentary by the bioethics news watch BioEdge on Oct. 3.

Regardless, he said, their bodies should be used for medical research. Repeating a common fallacy of the bioethics debate on PVS, Curry stated that such patients will not recover. “Those who are in a PVS will not ever wake up, they feel no pain or discomfort and have no continuing interest in their own survival…”

While making the argument that PVS patients have no right to mental autonomy since they have no apparent functioning mental capacity, Dr. Curry excused the medical “use” of their bodies by suggesting such patients should be allowed to choose to donate their bodies for the good of science, saying, “…these patients must also have a right to risk that life for the common good.”
Miracles do happen, but don't let that get in the way of the progress of science. [And no, Jeremy Hand's case isn't that of PVS ... but it shows again how things can go despite what the doctors said would be a hopeless case.]

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

That is a sad commentary on our culture. You allow death to creep in - just in one area, and it makes it way to so many other places.