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dobbspic I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.) I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years. Oliver Sacks found Reef Madness "brilliantly written, almost unbearably poignant." Check it out.

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Back from a vegetative state

Posted on: March 6, 2009 10:11 AM, by David Dobbs

FromMind Hacks:

We've reported before on brain imaging research that shows brain activity in those in a 'persistent vegetative state'. What I didn't know until today was that one subject in this research, Kate, has since woken up. This YouTube video tells Kate's story:

Sometimes firm ground proves to be slippery.


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Comments

1

But she had a brain that looked like a brain and was otherwise brain-like, right, not a mass of goo?

Posted by: speedwell | March 6, 2009 12:06 PM

2

See David, if you post stuff like this you risk upsetting the pro-choicers. Can't we all just have the comfortable illusion that anyone who can't talk isn't alive?

Posted by: Mike | March 6, 2009 1:25 PM

3

Human's brain is unbelievable. For example, in medical science you can't say that someone is dead even if their heart is not beating but there are still impulses emited by brain. Kate is not the only person who amazed those, who had already losted their faith in human natural-inborn ability to stay alive and kicking.

Posted by: wybory sondaze demokracja | April 9, 2009 8:31 AM

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