The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman wrote: Facilitated Communication

A Hammer wrote:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_a ... 930608.ece

Linda Wouters did not believe in miracles until she held Rom Houben’s twisted hand. Doctors had long insisted that the car crash victim had slipped into a deep coma but his therapist knew otherwise.

At the care centre, 50 miles (80km) east of Brussels, where Mr Houben, 46, lives, Mrs Wouters spoke yesterday of his long journey back to the living and the controversial technique that enables him to communicate.

After spending 23 years “locked in” — conscious but paralysed and unable to communicate — Mr Houben is now seemingly able to express himself in remarkably lucid messages while Mrs Wouters guides his hand over a computer screen.

Some experts wonder, however, whether it is really him who is tapping out the words.

“He says, ‘I am blessed’,” Mrs Wouters told The Times. “It is difficult to imagine it. I know he feels it and I know what he means when he says it but it is still difficult to imagine it.”

Mr Houben’s “rebirth” took many painstaking months. “We asked him to try and blink but he couldn’t; we asked him to move his cheek but he couldn’t; we asked him to move his hand and he couldn’t,” Mrs Wouters said.

“Eventually, someone noticed that when we talked to him he moved his toe so we started to try and communicate using his toe to press a button.”

It was a breakthrough but much more was to come when a fellow speech therapist discovered that it was possible to discern minuscule movements in his right forefinger.

Mrs Wouters, 42, was assigned to Mr Houben and they began to learn the communication technique that he is now using to write a book about his life and thoughts. “I thought it was a miracle — it actually worked,” she said.

The method involves taking Mr Houben by the elbow and the right hand while he is seated at a specially adapted computer and feeling for minute twitches in his forefinger as his hand is guided over the letters of the alphabet. Mrs Wouters said that she could feel him recoil slightly if the letter was wrong. After three years of practice the words now come tumbling out, she said.

The novel method of communication has not convinced all medical experts, however. “It’s Ouija board stuff. It’s been discredited time and again when people look at it. It’s usually the person who is doing the pointing who is doing the messages,” Arthur Caplan, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said after watching a video of the pair.

The spectacle is so incredible that even Steven Laureys, the neurologist who discovered Mr Houben’s potential, had doubts about its authenticity. He decided to put it to the test.

“I showed him objects when I was alone with him in the room and then, later, with his aide, he was able to give the right answers,” Professor Laureys said. “It is true.”

Mrs Wouters said that Mr Houben could indicate on his screen whether he wanted to write a text message or listen to the radio. (He is not keen on television.) “When he moves, you can hardly see it but I can feel it,” she said.

“The tension increases and I feel he wants to go so I move his hand along the screen and if it is a mistake he pulls back. As a facilitator, you have to be very careful that you do not take over. You have to follow him.”

Mr Houben’s first written work was published in the care centre magazine. In it he described his incredible reawakening. “Someone had thrown away the key forever,” he wrote. “In the eyes of the world I was a sporty young man who had suddenly become a vegetable. I was lying there but was I really there? Well, I was there day in, day out. I heard, I saw, I felt, but only deep inside, hidden from everyone, but not from myself.

“Now I can communicate and talk via facilitated communication. Not everyone believes in this form of communication. It is a controversial method but, for me, it is vital to life. At last, my views can be heard and my feelings expressed.”

Mrs Wouters said that she felt guilty when she went on holiday because she knew that Mr Houben would not be able to communicate in the same way without her.

“What I want to be most is a tool, but I feel like a friend,” she said. “I want to do for him what a friend would do. It is difficult sometimes because I have to leave Rom here. I don’t take him home with me.”

The sudden media attention has been exhausting but exciting. Mr Houben said: “Normally everything goes along like a snail but now I feel like I am sitting in a Porsche — not comfortable but very happy.”

Mrs Wouters said: “He says, ‘I have a rich life at this moment’. He wants to tell his story but he needs time to tell it. People react and say he is very courageous but he says, ‘I am just living my life and telling how it feels to me. What is courageous about that?’.”

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Yeah, Reagan fails that test pretty hard. But doublethink is the name of their game.

tzor wrote:

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Yeah, Reagan fails that test pretty hard. But doublethink is the name of their game.

Normally I let you ranting rabid progressive jackasses drool on in orgasmic glee but this one has to get my comment. How the hell can you even suggest that Reagan would fail this test when over half of the points were not even issues during his lifetime?

• Proposed a stimulus plan in 1981, which fails him on point #1.
• Reagan pulled troops out of Lebanon in defiance of military recommended troop surge requests which fails him on point #6.
• Reagan shipped weapons to Iran, which is the opposite of containing and disarming them, which fails on point #7

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion;

CatharzGodfoot wrote:

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion;

Hey, at least they're doing an about-face on the abortion issue and trying to protect vulnerable women.

FrankTrollman wrote:Proposed a stimulus plan in 1981, which fails him on point #1.

Reagan’s prescription rested on four pillars: tax cuts, deregulation, reductions in the rate of government spending, and a stable, carefully managed growth of the money supply. The federal income tax reduction was the centerpiece: Reagan secured a 25 percent across-the-board reduction over a three-year period, beginning in October 1981. The upper income marginal tax rate was dropped from 70 percent, which Reagan believed was punitive and stifling, to 28 percent.

…

The deficit under Ronald Reagan increased 35 percent, from an inherited deficit (from President Jimmy Carter) of $104 billion in 1980 to a final deficit of $141 billion in 1989. The deficit peaked at $236 billion in 1983, particularly because of the plummet in tax revenue during the recession. It began dropping steadily in 1986, continuing through the 1987 crash. (Source: Congressional Budget Office figures, “Historical Tables.”)

FrankTrollman wrote:Reagan pulled troops out of Lebanon in defiance of military recommended troop surge requests which fails him on point #6.

FrankTrollman wrote:Reagan shipped weapons to Iran, which is the opposite of containing and disarming them, which fails on point #7

Data Vampire wrote:White House Security Fail

tzor wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Reagan shipped weapons to Iran, which is the opposite of containing and disarming them, which fails on point #7

Another nice diversion as the conditions in Iran has changed significantly from then and now; back then Iran wasn’t actively trying to join the nuclear club with the express intent of wiping Israel off of the map.

clikml wrote:I hope the GOP does not stop weeding out moderates until the kkk and pro life bombers are all that is left.