LIVE & LEARN
A tale of two (Terri Schiavo & Terry Wallis)

Friday, July 7, 2006


Live and learn
Posted: July 7, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By Joseph Farah
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

During the Terri Schiavo debate, there were some cynics, including her estranged husband, who proclaimed the brain-injured woman had no chance to recover or even improve her condition.

It would take a miracle, they said. And they didn't believe in miracles.

Now a university study of a man who recovered after spending 19 years in a minimally conscious state is suggesting such miracles do happen.

In 1984, 19-year-old Terry Wallis was thrown from his pick-up truck near his Massachusetts home. He was not found until about 24 hours later in a coma with massive brain injuries.

Within a few weeks, he had stabilized in what was termed a minimally conscious state. Doctors predicted it would last indefinitely. And it did – for 19 years. Then, in 2003, he started to speak.


Over a three-day period, Wallis regained the ability to move and communicate, and started getting to know his daughter – 1 year old at the time of the accident and then 20 when he awoke. Wallis thought he was still 19 years old. He thought Ronald Reagan was still president.

Even while the Terri Schiavo case raged, Wallis' case was termed a miracle by doctors and family members.

The study of the case by Nicholas Schiff of Weill Medical College of Cornell University suggests the human brain has far greater potential for recovery and regeneration then ever suspected. It also suggests gross inadequacies in the system for diagnosing and caring for patients in vegetative or minimally conscious states.

Schiff and his colleagues used a new brain imaging technique called diffusion tensor imaging. The system tracks water molecules and reveals the brain's white matter tracts – akin to a wiring diagram. They combined this with more traditional PET scanning to show which brain areas were active.

The study found Wallis' brain had, very gradually, developed new pathways and novel anatomical structures to re-establish functional connections, compensating for the brain pathways lost in the accident.

They found that new axons – the branches that connect neurons together – seemed to have grown, establishing new working brain circuits.

Like Terri Schiavo, Wallis was frequently classified as being in a permanent vegetative state. Though his family fought for a re-evaluation after seeing many promising signs that he was trying to communicate, their requests were turned down.

Wallis, now 42, still needs help eating and cannot walk, but his speech continues to improve, and he can count to 25 without interruption.

No doubt some cynics would say his quality of life is not much better than when he was in a coma. And that's the trouble with the quality-of-life arguments made in cases like Wallis' and Schiavo's.

Terry Wallis – like Terri Schiavo – should remind us that there is something meaningful and wonderful and miraculous about life itself. Those who would cut off water and food to people in such circumstances should remember that's the way it began in Nazi Germany. The arguments then were all about "quality of life" rather than sanctity of life.

America seems awfully eager to forget about Terri Schiavo – to put the whole sordid episode behind us. But the problem with that kind of denial is that the lives of others in her circumstances are being snuffed out every day because of the precedent set in that national debate by secular high priests in black robes who insisted on imposing their morality on the rest of us.

Their worldview doesn't allow for miracles – like the kind of miracle that took place in the life of Terry Wallis. It defied all the medical literature. It defied the "wisdom" of the judicial activists. It defied all the talk about "permanent vegetative states."

And now that miracle has been documented clinically by top medical researchers.

Is it time to rethink the way we kill brain-injured and handicapped people?

Related special offer:

Get the definitive book on Schiavo's life and death, "Terri's Story"

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. His latest book is "Taking America Back." He also edits the weekly online intelligence newsletter Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, in which he utilizes his sources developed over 30 years in the news business.