When care givers go bad.
26Nov. 09
The news sites are going crazy right now about a Belgian man called Rom Houben who has spent the last 23 years in a coma. His facilitators are now claiming he was not in a coma at all, but rather that he was just trapped conscious inside is body unable to get out and communicate with the outside world.
The skeptic sites are going crazy as well about this story, but not for the same reason. Watch the video below and see if you can pick the reason why.
The interesting bit starts at 25 seconds in. Observe if you will the typing that is going on. Who is doing the typing there? Is it the man who has been in the coma for 23 years, or is it the woman using his hand like a wand?
This is something known as “facilitated communication”. Facilitated communication has been tested thoroughly dozens of times and each time it has failed miserably, sometimes showing to be something akin to the ideomotor effect, other times just a straight out scam. Its inner workings is very similar if not exactly the same as using a wigi board — all you need is one person to be scamming the others at worst, or for other people to follow queues without realising it and push the pointer to the answer they desire.
James Randi has a rather angry rant about the whole thing over at the JREF website, and other skeptics also chuck in their 2.2 cents (incl. GST) such as PZ Myers at Pharyngula. I highly suggest you go have a read.
Now it is entirely possible that this person may well have been trapped all this time, but what is happening here now is horrible. It is not him typing. In the MSNBC video he is not even looking at the screen but rather to the side of the chair well away from the screen. The facilitators being extremely evil and taking advantage of this poor man to their own ends. It is a horrid thing for them to do, and heartbreaking to see someone so vulnerable being taken advantage of in such a cruel heartless manner.
Please, get the word out there about what is actually going on. We need these people to be shamed and held accountable for their actions.
November 26th, 2009 at 11:43 am
If a person really is conscious in that condition, with no motor control, they’re usually able to communicate by blinking — or through an electroencephlograph type interface — a brain-computer interface.
All of which is far less juju than some one else picking up his hand and moving it.
November 26th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I disagree that he’s not looking when there is typing going on.
The nos.nl video is also not showing any looking away while typing. The facilitator is also not reading while typing, so you can’t draw conclusions about errors etc which have been raised on other blogs.
The agressiveness with which this case has been attacked has taken me by surprise, especially when all one really could raise are questions, pointing to facilitated comunication. Yet the skeptic blogosphere is using words like fraud and malice and is much too certain for my liking.
November 26th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Sometimes he is looking at the screen, sometimes he isn’t. It is the times that he isn’t which are the key. I do not understand what you mean when you say “the facilitator is also not reading white typing”, every shot I have seen she is looking at the screen towards the keypad. This is what would be expected whether what she was doing is real or fake so the direction of her eyes does not seem relevant to me.
What is relevant is the speed at which she is guiding the hand. It is claimed she is feeling for subtle pulses in his finger to guide her. If they are so subtle there is no way in which she or anyone could guide someone’s hand as fast as she is with the accuracy required for an onscreen keyboard of that size. Maybe if there were only four or six buttons on that screen, but not a whole keyboard.
There is a chance that what we saw was just demonstrations for cameras, so not done at the speed at which they type while the facilitated communication is happening. However no sites have made any mention along those lines. This could just be poor reporting which really would not be surprising in the least.
The reason why the agressiveness (which took me by surprise as well) is because in the early 90’s there were announcements of amasing breakthroughs for children with Autism through facilitated communication. Kids who were at the higher levels and barely able to communicate with the outside world were suddenly “talking” and “communicating” as you would expect a normal child too. Many were put back in to school with their facilitator carrying on lessons as any other child their age would.
After a while (and it was a VERY long while), someone finally got around to testing it. The children and the facilitators were shown a series of cards where neither could see the other’s card. Every time it was only the facilitators card that was described, never the autistic childs. They scored a 100% failure. It was demonstrated these cruel callous people were abusing the innocent and extremely vulnerable children for their own heartless means.
Such actions on behalf of the facilitators can only be described as cruel and sadistic both too the kids and to their poor families, getting screwed mentally around as they were at such great personal expense.
At this point in time, things are looking to be running the exact same course, only this time instead of autistic kids being the helpless victims, it is a man who has been in a coma.
November 26th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Regrettably human vulnerability is exploited ruthlessly and frequently enough for me to wonder what benefit we get from it. Your approach here is most encouraging and I applaud you for such.
Having spent years working with wonderful clinicians in ABI trauma rehab’ from coma to home, I can confirm credit is taken for ‘miracles n magic’ despite multi-disciplinary teams working up to 10 hours per day, frequent surgery, agonisingly slow increments, etc. I’m presently smoldering over a local who is being wheeled around as “a miracle of prayer” — which is immediately reported as such also :(
Remember, no-one that ill ever even approaches their pre-morbid condition, requiring 24/7 monitoring, care and ongoing therapy to retain almost all improvements. So as “miracles” go it scores an F.
And what was the 25 hour plus final surgery to recently separate conjoined twins here in Australia? “Miraculous”!
“Disability Means Possibility”: a ‘cutting edge multi-million dollar tag line’ say the scam artists at Scope. “Just be sure to have the *right* damn disability” is my reply.
Cerebral palsy is [or perhaps by now was] their sole client base. Ataxia is the defining neuromuscular symptom. Even my team leader had no idea, and I was ridiculed for “giving anatomy lectures” when I used the term.
I pondered the merits of pointing out differences between symptomatology, neurology and anatomy but thought better of it. We call these types of associations ‘siphons’ — skilled in rorting our funding guidelines. Evaluation is not in efficacy of interaction, but of profit for the company per employee per 15 minute blocks/week.
I tend to agree with Randi here. “Facilitation” is a warning bell. Facilitation in populations with compromised communication is much as Randi claims. The Body Game didn’t get it’s name lightly.
November 27th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Amusing cartoon about facilitated communication.
http://macleodcartoons.blogspot.com/2009/11/facilitated-communication-miracle.html
November 27th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
That was quick.
:)
February 16th, 2010 at 11:12 am
“Dr. Laureys Admits Facilitated Communication Failure”:
by Steven Novella, Feb 15 2010;
http://skepticblog.org/2010/02/15/dr-laureys-admits-facilitated-communication-failure/
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:50 am
[…] months ago I wrote a blog post both here and at my blog about the case of Ron Houben, a man who was left in a vegetative state after a car […]