[quote]jbpick86 wrote:
[quote]oldstyle00 wrote:
Fetuses cannot feel pain until at least the 28th week of gestation because they haven’t formed the necessary nerve pathways, says Mark Rosen, an obstetrical anesthesiologist at the University of California at San Francisco. He and his colleagues determined that until the third trimester, “the wiring at the point where you feel pain, such as the skin, doesn’t reach the emotional part where you feel pain, in the brain.” Although fetuses start forming pain receptors eight weeks into development, the thalamus, the part of the brain that routes information to other areas, doesn’t form for 20 more weeks. Without the thalamus, Rosen says, no information can reach the cortex for processing.
Fetuses do have reflex reactions that can make them seem pained, Rosen says. “If you see a fetus in utero react to needle stimulation, then the common conclusion is that it must feel.” But just as with paraplegics, “that’s a reflex that’s mediated by the spinal cord; that’s not a conscious reaction,” he says. It is possible that a temporary structure of neurons that appears in a fetus’s brain during the second trimester allows it to sense pain. But Rosen and his colleagues believe a fetus’s brain doesn’t function coherently enough to be conscious.[/quote]
How did they determine it? I have found far more studies on the inaccuracies of fetal brain wave testing. There is an extreme amount of conjecture in your post about what Rosen says. Everything you said is merely an hypothesis. And anytime you quote a study coming out of San Francisco that just so happens to tow the liberal line, everyone should look at it with a little skepticism.
Rosen’s argument is basically this, “The fetus is not in pain because it can’t process what its feeling, therefore the stimulation that it is feeling is not pain.” However, that doesn’t fit with your clinical death ideal. The mere act of reacting to external stimuli is enough to be considered life, and a wait and see approach would then be taken. By your own logic, when a fetus reacts to external stimuli it is considered “person” enough to wait and see if the situation improves. Pain has nothing to do with it, the reaction does.
Prior to the Thalamus being formed the fetus can’t process any stimuli, it would be a reflex. The definition of death is not disputed, and is considered the time when electroencephalography (EEG) activity ceases. EEG measures brain activity and must demonstrate regular wave patterns to be considered valid. By this rule the onset of life would be the time when fetal brain activity begins to exhibit regular wave patterns, which occurs fairly consistently around week 25. Previous to that time, the EEG only shows small bursts of activity without sustained firing of neurons. A reaction can be a reflex, which doesn’t travel up to the brain to be processed. A person who is paralyzed can have a reflex reaction without their brain processing that the external stimulus.
I will pose it like this, I plug a patient up to an EEG and its isoelectric, but I pin prick his foot and it reacts, is it ethical to stop life supporting measures at that time in the absence of patient wishes?[/quote]
Their foot reacts or their brain? I maybe wrong, but I have never heard of a time when someone is registering nothing on an EEG (clinically deceased) and then a pin prick makes the EEG then register a wave pattern, which would indicate the brain is still alive.
The earliest attempt to record human fetal brain activities had done by Linsley (1942) [4] when he saw
that the trace from the lower abdomen of his pregnant wife were similar to neonates EEG. The direct
measurement from fetal scalp by using special electrodes through the vaginal fornicate had done by
Berbstine et al (1955) but first practical continues recordings achieved by suction electrodes by Rosen and
Scibetta [5] in 1972. Several studies had been done by using suction/screw electrodes in last decades.
However, the fetal EEG recording still is far from clinical procedure like fetal heart rate monitoring. [6]
The EEG patterns of fetus and neonates differ from adults and hence the different frequency band
which are explained before cannot use. The EEG recording from normal fetus shows four different
patterns; Low Voltage Irregular (LVI), HVS, mixed and trace of alternant. On the other hand, voltage
depression and isoelectric patterns are the abnormal FFEG patterns. These patterns are somehow similar
to patterns observed in neonate of the same conceptual age. The characteristics of fetal EEG patterns are
summarized in Table 2.3 [6]
http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/156045.pdf
I didn’t read the whole pdf.
http://altweb.jhsph.edu/wc6/paper79.pdf
JB I like the dialogue its much better then equating people who believe differently as nazis or slave holders.
