This reminds me when I remember reading a research article about patients that appeared comatose. Some patients that eventually woke up reported being totally conscious the entire time and able to recount conversations that occurred in the room when they were still comatose as proof. So the researcher knows that at least a percentage of comatose patients aren’t actually comatose, but just totally locked in their bodies but fully aware and awake. The researcher does work with brain scan (realtime Functional MRI) which can see brain scans as up to the second they happen. Experimenting with volunteers that were not comatose the researcher figured out that you can come up with two specific radically different things and be able to tell which one of the two the person was concentrating on.
As an example: imagine an apple sitting on a table. Sunlight shining off the red skin of the apple, etc. Now think about the concept of love (however you define it). Those two things use very different parts of your brain. A researcher with a fMRI machine can learn what your specific brain looks like when you’re thinking about one thing or the other thing.
With this you would now have a way to communicate two states without being able to move muscle or say a word. You then decide that thinking “love” means “yes” and thinking “apple” means “no”. You now have the ability to answer yes or no questions with only your brain…even if you appear comatose but are fully awake.
The researcher then went on to explain that they haven’t, and won’t try it on any comatose-appearing patients? Why? It came down to the problem if the patient asks to die. The only way to avoid having to face the question…was to never do the thing allowing it to be asked.
I love hearing about research like this. But yeah, that would be an ethical dilemma. Especially determining how much you trust that your system works, and proving that they are of sound enough mind to make such a decision even if they’re answering yes/no.
I don’t remember the article raising questions about determining the patient’s mental sanity as to whether an affirmative answer to “asking to die” was enough. That’s an aspect I never even considered.
I also appreciate that the researcher, who is clearly very smart to even have gotten this far in understanding the technology and its implications, is also smart enough to understand they themselves don’t have the full capacity raise and answer this question ethically to be able to move forward.
Did he get a beer?
He wanted a blowjob. But they told the press it was a “beer”…
He is paralized. He couldn’t even feel it.
