Maybe Santorum Was Right

Remember Terry Schaivo, the woman who lived for years in a "persistently vegetative state" and was finally starved to death at her husband's request by medical authorities acting with full support from the judicial system?

Of course you do!

One of those who worked hardest to protect Mrs Schaivo's right to life was Senator Rick Santorum, and ever since he has been assailed by radical secularists and abortion rights activists who have sought to portray him as an anti-science religious fundamentalist. That was unfair and still is. A big part of Senator Santorum's argument was that medical science was constantly being revised and that at least a partial cure for Mrs. Schaivo's condition might appear at any time.

Well, as it turns out, such a cure may have already been available, unbeknownst to the medical "experts" who recommended killing Mrs. Schaivo and the judicial authorities who acted on their recommendation.

The Guardian reports:

We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth? Across three continents, severely brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after taking ... a sleeping pill….

It all sounds miraculous, you might think. And in a way, it is. But this is not a miracle medication, the result of groundbreaking neurological research. Instead, these awakenings have come as the result of an accidental discovery by a dedicated - and bewildered - GP. They have all woken up, paradoxically, after being given a commonly used sleeping pill.

Across three continents, brain-damaged patients are reporting remarkable improvements after taking a pill that should make them fall asleep but that, instead, appears to be waking up cells in their brains that were thought to have been dead. In the next two months, trials on patients are expected to begin in South Africa aimed at finding out exactly what is going on inside their heads. Because, at the moment, the results are baffling doctors.

Read the whole thing here.

The key phrase in this whole thing is "at the moment." Scientific opinion, especially in areas like medical or environmental science, is extremely malleable. New discoveries and new perspectives are emerging constantly, and often from outside the scientific establishment. What is "known" is constantly being revised. This places severe limitations on the extent to which we can rely upon the pronouncements of "experts" as a guide to public policy, and that is why, as Senator Santorum insists, the recommendations of scientific authorities must be balanced by moral, political and economic considerations -- especially when human lives hang in the balance.