Too late for Terri, but still encouraging news

The Wall Street Journal reports today on a medical study that, if its findings are true, suggests the possibility that Terri Schiavo was aware of her husband’s unrelenting quest to have her put to death by starvation and dehydration five years ago.

In a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, four of 23 patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state showed signs of consciousness on brain-imaging tests.

Even more significantly, one patient was able to answer yes and no questions using the researchers' technique—indicating the potential for communication with people previously considered unresponsive.

Researchers at two centers, in England and Belgium, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests on 54 patients with severe brain injury. Of these patients, 31 were diagnosed as being in a minimally conscious state, meaning they showed intermittent signs of awareness such as laughing or crying. The other 23 were diagnosed as being in a vegetative state, meaning they were considered unresponsive and unaware of their surroundings.

The study is part of a growing body of work changing how people think about the vegetative state. "There has been a kind of nihilism towards these patients. This represents a cultural shift," says Joseph J. Fins, chief of the medical-ethics division at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York.

Did Obama get outmaneuvered on embryonic stem cell funding?

CNSNews, March 13:

On Wednesday, only two days after he lifted President Bush’s executive order banning federal funding of stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos, President Barack Obama signed a law that explicilty bans federal funding of any "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."

The provision was buried in the 465-page omnibus appropriations bill that Obama signed Wednesday. Known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, it has been included in the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services every fiscal year since 1996.

The amendment says, in part: "None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for—(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."

Two days after Obama, to much acclaim, restored federal funding of embryo destruction in the name of science, he signed a law effectively outlawing the practice for the remainder of the current federal fiscal year.

Did he know that the Dickey-Wicker amendment was buried in the massive spending bill (as it has been each of the past 13 years)? How is that possible, given the circus of just two days earlier?

Did abortion-advocate congressional leaders know it was in there? The article asserts that the answer is Yes:

Close observers on both sides of the embryonic stem cell issue were well aware of the Dickey-Wicker amendment, and understood that it would pose a legal obstacle to federal funding of embryo-killing research even if President Obama issued an executive order reversing President Bush's administrative policy denying federal funding to that research.

And now, some in Congress are negotiating with pro-life Dems (surprisingly, there are still some) to get Dickey-Wicker repealed.

So how did this slip past Obama? Did he get outmaneuvered in some Congressional power play, or is there something deeper going on?

We are here! (Promoting a Culture of Life)

A few days ago I finally got around to seeing the 2008 version of Horton Hears a Who! with my ten-year-old son. The theme of the story ("A person's a person, no matter how small") fits in quite well with the Culture of Life. I have created a little poster to remind us that all life -- even when we can't see it yet -- is precious.

Click to view full-sized image