Boy Born Without a Brain Dies - This is not a joke

reply to post by AQuestion


One of my twin daughters was born with just the brain stem (my other daughter is fine). Right after her birth the doctor held a flashlight to her head. Because her head was filled only with fluid, it glowed. She lived a month like this. Now this may sound cold, but she was my daughter and there's no way I would have wanted her to suffer a life without meaning, so her passing was a relief. She also had club feet, spina-bifida, and of course she was deaf and blind.

I guess this shows that the basic life functions are controlled solely in the brain stem.

This does an interesting thought. If the brain holds conscientious, is this where the "soul" resides? Having no brain would you then also have no soul? (for those of us that believe in theses things) it says he was playing with pumpkins before he died. With nothing more than a brain stem it seems to me you would have no need, desire or ability to interact with anything.

reply to post by Unity_99


So the parents said.

People see what they want to see.

reply to post by jiggerj


I am so very sorry for your loss

Do they know what causes it?

Originally posted by nixie_nox
reply to post by jiggerj

 

I am so very sorry for your loss

Do they know what causes it?

I was too shocked to ask. My first child was stillborn, so the birth of this child was really a mind blower.

reply to post by sirhumperdink


You're not solving any problems by being a dickhead. You're just being a dickhead.

I agree that God has no place in the 21st century, but if we're going to be fair and create a better world, then neither do dickheads.

Take your atheistic views elsewhere. It's just trolling and everyone here knows it.

I worked with a lady a few years back who had a niece (or great niece, maybe) born with this condition.

The family was told prior to the baby's birth that there was no hope of survival. The child was allowed to starve to death. My recollection is that it took something like 2 and a half weeks for the baby to die.

The entire experience was devastating. Even viewing from a distance, it was troubling to see this happening to a human life. I feel for anyone who has gone through such an experience.

reply to post by jiggerj

Do you believe in evolution?

Do you think brain-less babies are related to evolution?

On the one hand, I think that the challenges faced by our ancestors and our pre-human roots were tremendous and heart breaking. If evolution is to be believed then all of the things we have today had to be tinkered with and discarded or kept depending on natural pressures. What causes babies to be born without a complete brain? I can only think it IS related to evolution. It might be that something in our diet has changed or something in our living circumstances or maybe it was a rare viral disease, but that's all part of our evolution. That it's obscure is painful to cope with.

Thing is, evolution can only go so far. We have to go the rest of the distance. Evolution can't effectively do things like open heart surgery or repairing a gun shot wound or giving somebody hearing that's partially deaf. This is why we pay medical researchers and doctors. They can effectively do what evolution can't. In this I see us as taking on the extra burden.

There're other examples. Evolution can't effectively give us the legs of a Cheetah to run 50 to 60 mph or the wings of a bird to cross bodies of water or obstacles. Instead we build cars and airplanes and spacecraft. Evolution can't effectively give us gills to breath underwater, so we build oxygen tanks and scuba gear. Evolution can't effectively allow us to live in space, so we made spacesuits.

But evolution did give us a brain. And the brain might be the ultimate accomplishment of evolution. This is because with a brain we can effectively start doing what evolution cannot.

This all tells me there's no God. A caring God wouldn't allow this to happen. People make too many excuses. It's really just Cognitive Dissonance. Their mind has to deal with two contradictory thoughts: god is caring and god makes brain-less babies. How do they settle this conflict? Cognitive Dissonance. A caring God would not allow it. Deep down, we know it too. We wouldn't do this. If it was discovered that some humans had been experimenting and brain-less babies had been produced, there'd be an outcry to put them in prison! Cognitive Dissonance is the desire to not change. It's honestly an immense effort to change and we're constantly trying to preserve our energies.

Ironically, evolution is probably to blame for Cognitive Dissonance:
en.wikipedia.org - Cognitive_dissonance...

...........
Cognitive dissonance theory warns that people have a bias to seek consonance among their cognitions. According to Festinger, we engage in a process he termed "dissonance reduction", which he said could be achieved in one of three ways: lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors, adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors.[6] This bias gives the theory its predictive power, shedding light on otherwise puzzling, irrational, and even destructive behavior.
..........

reply to post by AQuestion


He was born without a brain...but he was not born without a spirit and soul. The physical body houses all of our spirits and souls; so that we can live in this realm.

I think his situation happened to teach those around him about love and how important our spirits and souls are; after all when we all pass away; leave the body we have lived in; our spirits and souls move on to another realm of existence. He knew he was loved and he loved in return.

Giving and receiving love is really the most important thing in life.

When I am on my death-bed it will not be how much money I have in my bank account; or how many material possession I have; that are important; the importance will be...how much I loved, helped people, and received love that will be the most important.

If true, which I doubt, they should of put him down after birth. I see no point in being alive, without having any hope of being anything, expect a lump of flesh. A sad tale, that should of ended before it began...

Interesting case.

Animals that are "lower on the evolutionary scale" function with only a collection of nerves, ie, a brain stem. They're able to live in their environments, function, eat, sleep.... Arthropods with only ganglia, no actual "brain" as we know it

I guess perhaps only the critical thinking would be absent but the basic instinct and animal nature would be present?

I haven't looked into anything of this nature before so I'm shooting from the hip on it.

I can see where life would be possible, but there would never be any development in the sense that we are accustomed to it.

**I'm not a biologist and could be greatly incorrect in my thinking on this subject

reply to post by AQuestion

In chess some people seek to exploit your weaknesses and others seek to test you. Risk versus fear. He plays a game where he takes as few positions as possible and merely attacks other beliefs without proving anything, a cowards game as there is no real intent to succeed in the point of the game, it is not about winning it is about overcoming. If one only seeks weaknesses then they are a predator. I am a sheepdog and love predators, they are so amusing and simple.

This individual was definitely trying to test me and anyone else who fell prey to his rants, however I knew this and took the chance of exploiting his weaknesses right back at him... except... he made his own collateral damage when striking back at me and others...and also made it quite obvious that he did not want to win, but to only aggravate the hell out of everyone that felt somewhat different than him about this thread. He didn't make much sense in his remarks to me...I don't even think he believed his own statements! I believe he is predator pure and simple, and I think that's what you meant anyhow (after reading your words a few times). It's amusing and annoying at the same time!

For further reading/research.

en.wikipedia.org...
rense.com...

I remember reading about a case of some guy with a good IQ having no evidence of a "brain" at all.
Apparently the fact that you _can_ survive without a brain casts doubt on our current understanding about the brain.
Limbo

I once heard a brain surgeon on coast to coast state that in the even your brain shuts down or can't function, every other cell in your body has the ability to temporarily behave like a brain cell, even doing the seemingly impossible by forming new memories. He gave an example of a woman they were operating on, whose brain function had been switched off for the duration of the surgery - and while this woman's brain was "offline" the surgeons and nurses had a specific and detailed conversation. This brain surgeon claims that when the woman's brain was back "online", she was able to relate the specific details of the conversation, to the astonishment of the hospital staff. This was a couple of years ago, can't recall the surgeon's name.

3 years without a memory or learning capabilities. I think it was cruel to have kept him alive that long.

Originally posted by Juggernog
3 years without a memory or learning capabilities. I think it was cruel to have kept him alive that long.

At least this was a real life experiment done in a normal environmental setting rather than a Plum Island setting.

reply to post by jeantherapy


Well if he's a surgeon it must be true!! Especially if he was on Coast to Coast

Seriously though, I'd be interested to see any real scientific evidence of this, if any actually existed.

It sounds like a not so bright surgeon is just running with a belief because he can't find another explanation.

Maybe the most rational explanation is much simpler: that the monitors used to record brain activity aren't sensitive enough to show the consciousness of some peculiar individuals when they're on heavy anesthetics.

reply to post by Valhall


This is a rare congenital anomaly, and even more rare is for the infant to survive

past the first day - month of life. There are many many more out there.

You simply could not imagine other very rare congenital abnormalities. Here's a few notable ones:

Cyclops - single eye, proboscis, holoprosencephaly (link )

Twin-twin transfusion with acardiac twin "monster" variant (one twin smaller, no heart link)

And a more common abnormality is the neural tube dysraphic ones that include
myelomeningocele (the worst , rarest variant is sirenomyelia - mermaidism!! link)

Children's and/or tertiary care ob-gyn hospitals see these much more than community
hospitals due to the nature of referrals.

And yes, they are all due to gene defects - of various types (deletions, translocations, etc)
or a bad protein expressed from the gene (mrna transcription).

Obviously we screen as best we can for neural tube defects,
but i believe ob ultrasounds should be done twice routinely. Not just one.
If you don't catch something well before 24 weeks - and even then - its a disaster.

reply to post by jeantherapy


That is very controversial and imho as a neuroradiologist, complete bunk.

The woman's "cortical functions" may have been lowered metabolically by

anesthesia drugs - but since everyone has different receptor types and density

to these drugs, she may not have been in a deep drug coma and simply came

out of it. As you may know, the brain itself does not "feel pain" when operated on.

The only pain fibers innervate the dura mater, and the scalp/ calvarium. Many

neurosurgical procedures are done with sedation and local anesthetic if brain mapping

is required during lesion resection. Almost all the cells in our body can be induced to

dedifferentiate into stem cells and then differentiate into cell from the same somatic line

but this is only done in vitro - we can't inject a drug and cause brain cells to form outside the

brain in a living person. Nor do body cells "think" like the brain, not even our autonomic ganglia.

Please.