Brain-Injury Patients Should be Used for Medical Experiments, Suggest Bioethicists
Severely brain-injured patients should be declared “dead,” some say
By Gudrun Schultz
MELBOURNE, Australia,
October 5, 2006

(LifeSiteNews.com) – Patients designated as in a “persistent vegetative state (PVS)” should be used for medical experiments, according to several top bioethicists, regardless of whether or not prior consent was obtained.

Several articles published in the recent issue of the Journal of Medical debated the potential use of patients with non-responsive brain function for such medical experiments as animal organ transplants—to bypass ethic prohibitions against using a living human being for medical experimentation, some even suggested designating such patients as “dead,” saying their cognitive impairments justified treating them as cadavers.

Dr. John Shea, medical advisor to Campaign Life Coalition, told LifeSiteNews.com it would never be ethically or morally acceptable to use a living human being for medical research without their permission, regardless of their level of cognitive function.

“A person who has PVS is not dead! If you claim to respect the sacredness of human life, you can’t use a human person for medical experimentation—that would be grossly immoral.” the rest