Donald Herbert, a New York state firefighter, went into a "decade-long stupor" in 1995, according to the Buffalo News, after "a roof collapsed on him" and "he was deprived of oxygen for up to 10 minutes." Herbert, who died of pneumonia this February, suddenly began talking again in April 2005 after his doctor, Jamil Ahmed, treated him with a drug cocktail. Ahmed told the New York Times his patient's pre-recovery condition had been "close to the persistent vegetative state."
But NBC's "Today Show" quickly cited doctors who drew a line between Herbert and Schiavo. "Neurologists who examined Terri Schiavo say her case was different, that she was in something called a persistent vegetative state, from which there is almost no chance of recovery," the show reported
Yet, truly the most telling fact about Wallis' recovery was stated by Dr. Nicholas Schiff of Cornell University, who co-authored the JCI study of Wallis' case. "We read about these widely publicized cases of miraculous recovery every few years, but none of them -- not one -- has ever been followed up scientifically until now," he told the New York Times.
Dr. Steven Laureys, a Belgian neurologist who co-authored a commentary in JCI that accompanied the Wallis study, told the Los Angeles Times: "It obliges us to reconsider old dogmas."
So why should anyone now want to draw a bright line between Schiavo and almost-unstudied recoveries like the one Wallis made?
Lady MacBeth could never rub out the spot of a king's blood she imagined on her hand -- and no matter what science tells us tomorrow, there's no erasing what's already been done to Terri Schiavo.