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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

FYI: Tombits: Conscious, but helpless if plug had been pulled

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 11/28/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Belgium's Rom Houben uses his touchscreen and assistance of his speech therapist Linda Wouters, left, to communicate during an interview Tuesday. (YVES LOGGHE / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

This can only be bad news for the mercy-killing brigades, the well-wishers and do-gooders who continually campaign for the right to put other people out of their misery, to spare others from enduring lives that they themselves do not think are worth living.

The bad news comes from Brussels where a man, who for 23 years was thought to be in a coma, in a "vegetative state," was finally found to have been conscious and aware of everything that was going on around him the whole time. He was simply unable to communicate as he listened to his doctors, nurses, friends and family talk about him and his condition.

Some of that talk was pretty grim. Rom Houben, who suffered his injuries in an automobile accident, was in what most of the medical profession considers to be a hopeless condition. He was a candidate to be removed from life support systems and allowed to die. This is considered an act of mercy as well as an economic benefit -- comatose patients are costly to care for.

Often, when the plug is pulled, patients don't conveniently die quickly. Instead, they starve to death. Mr. Houben, who says that all the time he was thought to be in a vegetative state -- "I screamed, but there was nothing to hear" -- would have been acutely aware that he was in fact starving to death.

Fortunately for him, his mother refused to accept what almost everyone else told her was reality and continued to have her son tested for signs of consciousness. Three years ago, a new scan found a conscious Rom Houben within that helpless body.

Today, Mr. Houben can communicate by using one finger on a touch screen on his wheelchair. It is not a life that most of us would choose, but it is a life and he is grateful to have it back.

Mr. Houben's case is apparently not an isolated one. Researchers who studied 44 patients believed to be in a vegetative state discovered that 18 of them, or 44 per cent, were actually in higher states of consciousness.

This seems to be clear evidence that wrong diagnoses in cases such at this are far too common. It is compelling evidence that we should not be so quick to pull the plug simply because we wouldn't want to live someone else's life.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 28, 2009 H2

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