Dear All,

Today I was struck by the ethical and moral issues raised in the talk ‘Vegetative state’ where Adrian Owen talked about his latest research.

New research has been carried out using MRI scanners on patients who had been clinically diagnosed as being in a ‘vegetative state’. The MRI scanners can show which parts of the brain are active. A ‘vegetative state’ is defined as wakefulness without awareness. A person in a vegetative state may therefore have their eyes open but do not know about the environment around them. They are unable to follow instructions such as ‘Please raise your hand now’.

It has now been shown that some people who appear to be in this state are aware. In an MRI scanner the patient is asked to think of ‘tennis’ or ‘moving between rooms in their house’. The active parts of the brain are very different when thinking about these two things and the people in an apparently ‘vegetative state’ could switch between them when asked showing them to be aware. They then moved to asking yes and no questions with ‘tennis’ for yes and ‘moving through rooms of the house’ for no.

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