Science and Society

As Easter passes away yet again, I have to sit back and reflect on the similarities and differences between the way my family versus the rest of the christian world celebrates the holiday. First of all, nearly my entire close family sits on the atheist/agnostic fence. Save for my mom, who sticks to her Christian Science rearing. This mix usually ends up with what we consider to be enlightened conversations about society and the state of the world.

However, our long-standing family tradition of drinking gin fizzes all morning results in the eventual degradation of any intelligent concepts. By the time we’ve eaten our brunch and the kids have found all the eggs, we’re spouting glorified generalizations from our untouchable logic at each other, and conversational havoc results… I believe that if we were to be visited by any strictly religious people, we would insult them in less than a minute. What a way to make friends and find the common ground. Drunk atheists on Easter… we need a parade.

Anyway, over the course of the weekend, we deemed that the world is a F*!ked up place, the religous zealots are the root of all evil, and Harpers’ magazine is a fabulous monthly read.

Of course our discussions ran to the poor case of the Schiavo woman. Now, the people jumping to her rescue may have the best of intentions at heart. Hell, I am not a proponent of killing someone, but I personally would never like to be left alive if in the same situation. Unfortunately, thanks to Kevorkian, we no longer have the ability to give a person a lethal injection in several states. How much less suffering would that be? If they are worried that this poor woman does actually feel and is aware, wouldn’t it be most humane to get her death over with quickly? Then again, the starving aspect does add a certain amount of sympathy to the side of the people working to keep her alive. And the sympathy vote is a strong one.

Even so, as strong as the emotions are in this case it is important to remember the scientific side of the story. People who are diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state are capable of appearing aware. There are different areas of the brain responsible for awareness and wakefulness. A damaged brain may be capable of producing a person who is awake, but not aware who seems responsive. Or the brain may allow a person to be aware, yet not appearing awake or responsive. It depends on the brain areas affected by the damage.

That said neuroscientists still have a lot to learn about how the brain works. There is a fine line between the diagnoses of persistent vegetative or minimally conscious state. Not enough research has been done to this point to determine what patterns of brain activity actually mean in a comatose person. Researchers are doing studies involving scanning the brains of people in vegetative and conscious states to learn what differences there are and what those differeences mean. Unfortunately, their results won’t be available in time to help Schiavo. Hopefully, though, they will be able to assist us in dealing with this kind of situation in the future, to help us avoid the media circus that has built up around a woman who knows nothing of what her family has started.

Happy Easter.

p.s. the timing of this debacle is wonderfully ironic… the religious people fighting for Schiavo probably see her as a sacrifice to the cause of the right to life just as Jesus was once the sacrifice to the whole of christianity. Ack!

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