By now, you may have heard the touching story about the Belgian man who was in a 23-year coma, but (supposedly) recently revealed to be physically paralyzed but fully conscious — and communicating? Now, there are serious concerns about the validity of his story, with some experts calling it bogus.
Rom Houben was 23 when he was involved in a debilitating car crash thought to have left him in a vegetative coma. But over the 2 decades that followed, his family pushed for further testing believing his brain function and activity was much stronger than doctors were aware. After moving him to a different hospital, new doctors diagnosed that Houben still had brain activity and was not in the deep coma previously thought. These same doctors also surmised that although fully paralyzed, Houben could actually communicate by typing letters into a special machine using only his index finger. Sounds promising and like a modern day miracle, right? Well, the problem lies in the technique used to determine the man’s supposed brain activity — a controversial technique called facilitated communication.
Facilitated communication is when a helper assists a physically disabled but mentally capable person to type out his or her thoughts. Widely discredited for decades, independent tests reveal this technique to be totally unreliable and often the result, conscious or not, of the assistant typing THEIR OWN words, not the patient’s. Basically, assistant’s pick up a patient’s hand and jam the patient’s finger into the keyboard, typing out what they “say” are the patient’s own personal thoughts. But experts are crying foul, particularly in the case of Rom Houben.
“I don’t trust it,” said Arthur Caplan, Director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics. “I’m not saying the whole thing is a hoax, but somebody ought to be checking this in greater detail. Any time facilitated communication of any sort is involved, red flags fly.” But skeptic James Randi said, “You see this woman who’s not only holding his hand, but what she’s doing is directing his fingers and looking directly at the keyboard. She’s pressing down on the keyboard, pressing messages for him. He has nothing to do with it.”
Here is video of Rom Houben supposedly communicating via facilitated communication. Is it real or a hoax? You decide! WATCH:
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Okaaaay….smh.That woman directing the poor man's hand is supposedly PROOF that he is actually communicatiing?!Surely they jest..smh.