dupe

[The Straight Story]

Nicholas Coke, Baby Born Without a Brain, Turns 1

Nicholas Coke was born one year ago with a rare and horrific birth defect that left him without most of his brain. Infants suffering from the condition, known as anencephaly, are often born without the tops of their heads, the skin and skull missing, and they usually die within hours or days at the most.

Nicholas Coke (From newsfirst5.com)
Nicholas Coke has wowed doctors by surviving a full year now, and his mother, Sheena, says he's a miracle baby. "He's a miracle," she told KOAA-TV in Colorado. "He's changed so many lives." Sheena says Nicholas can't hear, see, suckle or even sit up or crawl, but he still surprises her sometimes.

"He's smiling. He's laughed for the first time. It was wonderful to hear him laugh," Sheena said.

The hardest part for the mother is knowing that as miraculous as Nicholas' survival is, it's unlikely that he will survive much longer. "It's hard to know that I'm going to be burying my son soon, but it's wonderful to know he's made it a year."

http://www.zimbio.com/Nicholas+Coke/articles/N0Z59HfndzC/Nicholas+Coke+Baby+Born+Without+Brain+Turns

[ZombieHorde]

1. Who would claim a brainless human was a miracle?

A bizarrely religious person.

[hlthe2b]

2. Hard to know what to say....blessed by an anencephalic child?

I don't know that this child has quality of life, but the parents seem to think his survival has improved their own...

[networker]

3. This leads to an interesting question...

What exactly makes a human being "human"? From what I gather, Nicholas, without a brain, cannot now and will never have the ability to think or react to any stimuli beyond the autonomic functions of a brain stem. Now I understand that his mother loves him dearly, and she has my sympathy for her situation. That said, what quality of life does the future hold for an entity such as this?