Rights Come to Mind
Brain Injury, Ethics, and the Struggle for Consciousness

Joseph J. Fins calls for a reconsideration of severe brain injury treatment, including discussion of public policy and physician advocacy.

Joseph J. Fins (Author)

9780521887502, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 August 2015

250 pages, 4 b/w illus.
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.8 cm, 0.69 kg

'Fins provides a fair and comprehensive overview of the historical, biological, technological, social, and political contexts surrounding TBI and MCS patients, while also acting as an advocate for patients and their families.' Michael Roess, The Pharos

Through the sobering story of Maggie Worthen and her mother, Nancy, this book tells of one family's struggle with severe brain injury and how developments in neuroscience call for a reconsideration of what society owes patients at the edge of consciousness. Drawing upon over fifty in-depth family interviews, the history of severe brain injury from Quinlan to Schiavo, and his participation in landmark clinical trials, such as the first use of deep brain stimulation in the minimally conscious state, Joseph J. Fins captures the paradox of medical and societal neglect even as advances in neuroscience suggest new ways to mend the broken brain. Responding to the dire care provided to these marginalized patients, after heroically being saved, Fins places society's obligations to patients with severe injury within the historical legacy of the civil and disability rights movements, offering a stirring synthesis of public policy and physician advocacy.

1. Decisions
2. The injury
3. Coming to terms with brain injury
4. The origins of the vegetative state
5. A shift since Quinlan
6. Maggie's wishes
7. Something happened in Arkansas
8. From PVS to MCS
9. Leaving the hospital
10. Heather's story
11. Neuroimaging and neuroscience in the public mind
12. Contractures and contradictions: medical necessity and the injured brain
13. Minds, monuments, and moments
14. Heads and hearts, toil and tears
15. What do families want?
16. Deep brain stimulation in MCS
17. Mending our brains, minding our ethics
18. It's still freedom
19. Maggie's in town
20. When consciousness becomes prosthetic
21. The rights of mind
22. A call for advocacy.

Subject Areas: Neurosciences [PSAN], Medical ethics & professional conduct [MBDC], Medical & healthcare law [LNTM]