“It seemed to be a medical miracle: the car crash victim assumed for 23 years to be in a coma who was suddenly found to be conscious and able to communicate by tapping on a computer.
The sceptics said it was impossible – and it was. The story of Rom Houben of Belgium, which made headlines worldwide last November when he was shown to be “talking”, was today revealed to have been nothing of the sort.
Dr Steven Laureys, one of the doctors treating him, acknowledged that his patient could not make himself understood after all. Facilitated communication, the technique said to have made Houben’s apparent contact with the outside world possible, did not work, Laureys declared.”
Read more at The Guardian
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This reminds me of the part in Derren’s book “Tricks of the Mind” (if I recall correctly – many years since I’ve read it) where a friend of his likens being “treated” by a crank of some sort to having his uncle masturbating over him to fulfill his own desires…
PS: Don’t censor me, that’s in your book!
are they still doing that facilitated communication stuff? you’d think it would be over since all the lawsuits filed by those families of autistic kids years ago, which led to a double-blind study proving it didnt work. guess it’s taken on a life of its own…like alien abduction.
Sad. And disappointing that they don’t proplerly describe the method before and don’t describe now again why it was not really working out, what lead to this conclusion.
I just find this quite sad, that’s all.
LC x
Why is every so eager to say coma patients are still in there thinking away ?
After 23 years I hope the poor sod has his brain switched completely off.
If it was me trapped in ther my only thought would be a constant scream of “Kill me, kill me now”
Well, nobody here will be surprised by that “revelation”, we’ve known for years that it was a load of rubbish.
No surprise, except why did it take so long for them to carry out such a simple and obvious test?
Surely there must be some consideration for language issues, as well as some of his basic communication skills being eroded through the comatosed state?
Is this research to state that this was little more than the possible effects of infinite monkeys/typewriters and the complete works of shakespeare?!
I used to have Facilitated Communication ‘training’ from the mother of a young man with autism who had no speech but was obviously quite bright. We would ask him questions from a general knowledge book. I would hold his arm loosely and he would point at the letters on the FC board. I felt under enormous emotional pressure to support him to give the ‘correct’ answer. You cannot help but provide less resistance when the correct letter is nearby.
I also do a simple card trick using a very old technique that Derren used to great effect in Venice, I believe. The ‘participant’ is asked to point at a row of cards and move across. The magician, holding the mark’s hand, ‘knows’ when his/her finger is above the selected card. Same principle, really. Another form of idiomotor response?
I filed ‘Facilitated Communication’ under the heading ‘quackery’ and left it there, along with cranial osteopathy, chelation therapy, irlen lenses, antivaccination hyperbole, and numerous other approaches delivered by rich American ‘doctors’ (doctor of what? not medicine, most of the time) to the families of people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders who are desperate for any answer.
These people should be ashamed, but you know what? In my experience, they really aren’t.
Like mediums, they sell a lie that only a small percentage of them actually believe.
Some are misguided but genuine.
Most are greedy capitalists applying the principles of the free market to health care and education. (Always a bad idea.)
Just because a market exists, does not mean you should exploit it.
At first I thought this was quite sad but on second thoughts, when this story first broke I remember feeling horrified that someone had been trapped inside their own body and mind for that length of time, unable to communicate with the world. I was also surprised that, all things considered, Rom Houben appeared to be sane.
So, as dreadfully sad as the situation is, it’s a good thing that he hasn’t been trapped in a silent world for all those years and is probably unaware. At least I hope he is. The alternative is too awful to contemplate.
Laureys talked about this to the newspaper I read (NRC Handelsblad, a Dutch paper). Mr Houben is STILL believed to be conscious and locked-in. Just not communicating. Which makes it even worse… he was actually aware while this scam was going on. Horrible.