Medicine: The Twilight Zone Of Consciousness

Her family bitterly split, Terri Schiavo will now die. Do doctors know what's going on behind those eyes?

Hi, sweetheart. Hi, hi, it's mommy," says Mary Schindler to her daughter in a video available on the Internet. Terri Schiavo, 39, who hasn't been fully conscious for 13 years, gazes in her mother's direction from her hospital bed, and her expression blooms from slack-jawed passivity to beatific smile. She seems happy, comforted, aware--at least those are the interpretations the naive viewer would be inclined to apply. There are other brief videos on terrisfight.org In one, Schiavo seems to follow the movements of a balloon with her eyes; in another, she appears to comply with a doctor's request to...

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