He’s being called “a living miracle” and “a true Christmas miracle” that has “changed so many lives”.
Nickolas Coke, born without a brain (a condition called Anencephaly,) has managed to survive for a year without heavy medical intervention.
His mother, Sheena Coke, claims that the child shows signs of emotion, “He’s smiling. He’s laughed for the first time. It was wonderful to hear him laugh.” Though she is being honest with herself, knowing that Nicholas’ continued survival is unlikely. The longest any baby born in Anencephalic condition has lived, was two and half years.
I can understand her futile hopefulness, as he is her child after all and the emotional toil must be horrific. However, I find the situation itself to be extremely unsettling.
Let’s start with the basics: Nicholas was born without a brain, nothing more than a brain stem is in his skull. He is completely unable to perceive anything, in any of the five senses and never will be able to. He will never be able to feel anything emotionally. He will never be able to have a thought of any kind. The nerve tissue needed for all these things, does not exist in his skull. In blunt terms, Nicholas is a slab of meat, kept alive by the most basic, less-than-reptilian portion of the brain – a section that can do no more than control digestion, respiration and heart beat. He cannot even determine at the most rudimentary level if he is being fed, or expelling waste, or even breathing. Plants have an infinitely more sophisticated sensory experience than his!
How is this a miracle?
Nicholas is a freak occurrence of nature, which gave him enough nerve tissue at the end of a spinal cord to keep rudimentary autonomic functions working. That he has survived this long is disturbing, not miraculous and that he is being coddled and propped up as a miracle of any kind, is far more disturbing yet.
It is understandable that his mother would anthropomorphize Nicholas’ random nerve firings as emotional reaction, but basic biology tells us that this is a pipe dream with absolutely no possibility of being real reactions of any kind from Nicholas. He simply does not have the brain tissue necessary to be able to generate emotional responses to anything. A random firing of nerve signals is not an emotional response. Since he cannot perceive anything through any physical sense, he likewise cannot possibly react to anything in any fashion at all.
Though this writeup of the story at News First 5 is particularly rife with absurd emotionalism, the comments are cloying. Post after post of infantile, ludicrous claims of miraculous nature, centered around the “gifts from God” simply prove to me all the more, how utterly delusional religious people are! Furthermore, these comments prove another point I had suspected, but hadn’t seen such a complete display of: most religious minded people are utterly clueless about the very basic facts of biology and science in general. Their delusional mindset allows them to discount empirical evidence at a whim.
Nickolas Coke may be brainless, but at least it took an act of nature to do that to him.
Thank you so much for writing this. I seriously agree. This is no miracle. Although I do not believe it a god, I cannot see how people could possibly see this as more of a demonic kind of thing. How could a god that does this be good? But that is besides the point. In my opinion, this little thing is already dead. What they are doing, loving it and such is disgusting. It reminds me of loving and caring for a child which has died and is slowly rotting and smelling worse and worse (think the baby in Trainspotting). Seriously, this is so disturbing and it kills me that religious people can have emotions so easily induced without even analyzing the situation.
It really makes me wonder where our society is going…Where our species is going even. I mean, evolution comes to a stand-still with societies because they tend to the week, but extreme cases like this concern me. We let mentally handicapped people live normal lives and have children (??? Spreading the genes ???) and all of that, and dwarves, and primordial dwarves, and not that I have a problem with “little people,” but we have to see all of it for what it is: genetic defects that SHOULD NOT be passed on.
From an evolutionary perspective, I’d have to agree with your argument that such genetic defects are not healthy for the species. However, the one thing that we must be so very careful about in examining these problems, are the social issues – and I’m talking on a much deeper level than whether or not such a practice of population control would be considered discriminatory or “unfair”. The first problem comes in that it is so very easy to take the step from attempting to clean up the species’ gene pool through reproductive control and falling to the horror of eugenics. It changes in argument from not what defects need to be removed, but to who is allowed to decide what is defective. That is the slippery slope which leads to horrid danger!
Even more important, removing an individual’s reproductive rights (no matter how sound the reasoning may appear) is such an abysmal infringement of individual liberty, I could never support it, no matter how careful and impartial the science behind it may be.
Instead, my proposal to remove the worst of the genetic malfunctions from the species, is to concentrate effort on genetic research, so that our science can correct genetic defects directly before birth and allow the full freedom of life and all of it’s decisions to everyone. Yes, this will suffer problems as well, many even similar to what you encounter in reproductive control programs, but it is the only path I can see which has any potential for good, without infringing on the rights of the individual.
All regligous and spiritual debate aside, this case is not so unusual. There is another condition called hydranencephaly which causes the cortex to be completely absent at birth. Sometimes the damage occurs shortly after birth due to infections such as menengitis as what happened to my son.
The truly interesting thing about humans surviving without a cortex, and the possibility that they do react to their surroundings, is that it questions where exactly in the brain consciousness resides. A recent paper by Bjorn Merker addresses this question. (Google his name plus the word hydranencephaly and you should be able to find it – I don’t have the link handy).
My child did indeed express emotions, reactions, recognition, preferences, and dislikes. I was as shocked as anyone when we finally realized this was happening. I have since then met dozens of parents of children with this condition only to discover our experience matched theirs. These kids (some of whom live into their teens) can recognise different people and will respond accordingly (like/dislike). The express likes and dislikes for different types of food, music, and most surprising, a preference or dislike for different videos.
I am not going to get into the discussion of miracles, angels, or gods. What I would like to point out that kids such as Nicholas and my own son are fascinating little creatures. They serve to remind us that there is so much we do not know about how the brain works. What possibilities there exist for learning more about brain injury by studying these kids. I can assure you that, no matter how difficult to believe, these children are not functioning at the level of a reptile. They somehow maintain a huge range of qualities only associated with the human species. Had anyone told me this prior to having my child, I would never have believed it. But now I am full of questions, curiosity, and the realization that we may not know the answers yet but they are out there – somewhere.
I think we have a slight misunderstanding here. I’m not making blanket statements about all children with severe brain problems. I am making a very specific statement on Nicholas’ condition. He doesn’t have the needed sections of the brain to perceive outside stimulus of any kind, so I can very safely state that his existence is at a less-than-reptilian state. Healthy reptiles can perceive and react to their environment. Nicholas doesn’t have the needed portions of the brain to do either. Even if by some crazy miracle he somehow had a full, normal consciousness, he would be unable to perceive the outside world with any of the five senses and therefor could not react to it. Period.
I would really like to know how you can believe that Nicholas reacts to his surroundings in any way, when he cannot hear, taste, smell, see or feel anything – including his own body. Without our senses, we would have no idea that anything existed at all, outside of our own thoughts.
To take a case, such as your son’s, and compare it to Nicholas is not a fair comparison. Your son suffered damage from a disease, a functional brain which was ravaged by an outside force. Nicholas was born without the needed nervous tissue to perceive reality. The results are going to be very different between the two. Your son had the full potential for a normal existence at the beginning. Nicholas never did or will. Your son is reacting to his surroundings, because he has not fully lost his ability to use his five senses. Those portions of the brain may be damaged or hindered, but they’re not absent. Nicholas never had the brain material needed to do the same.
As for your son, you have my complete sympathy – but I cannot claim to know how you feel. Tragedies like this in life are horrible to endure and I can only attempt to imagine the turmoil and consternation involved. It would be rude of me to say that I understood. I could never claim so with honesty, unless I went through the same.
Are you sure this is a rare disorder and people have only lived to 2 and a half with it, cause pretty much all the drivers here in utah kind of prove its a common and survivable.