The story of Rom Houben who woke up from a 23-year-long ‘coma’ is making waves in medical circles. But is it all facilitated communication – some guiding hand behind his statements? That is the question being raised by some experts now.
In 2006, a full 23 years after a horrific car accident left him paralyzed and apparently unconscious, tests run by the University of Liege’s Coma Science Group showed that Houben’s brain was active, and almost normal. He wasn’t a vegetable, but aware, and trapped silently in the prison of his ruined body.
The Coma Science Group leader Steven Laureys is suggesting that as many as four in 10 people considered utterly comatose may be misdiagnosed.
Houben has indeed been able to answer yes-or-no questions with slight movements of his foot.
The man could be sentient today, many acknowledge. MRI scans perhaps attest to that. But the problem is with the interviews, over the videos aired by TV channels across the world, in which a woman is seen guiding him across the keyboard of a laptop.
James Randi, described as a “tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims,” calls it all a cruel farce.
He wrote - “The "facilitated communication" process consists of the "facilitator" actually holding the hand of the subject over the keyboard, moving the hand to the key, then drawing the hand back from the keyboard! This very intimate participatory action lends itself very easily to transferring the intended information to the computer screen. In the video you have just viewed, it is very evident that (a) the "facilitator" is looking
directly at the keyboard and the screen, and (b) is moving the subject's hand. The video editing is also biased, giving angles that line up the head of the subject with the screen, as if the subject were watching the screen…..