One of the primary reasons I wrote the book Glory, Duty, & the Gold Dome was to help Christians think through the “quality-of-life” debate from a scriptural standpoint. The novel is centered around a father and son team, working at the Georgia State Capitol, who work to save a pregnant, comatose woman from being murdered by her husband. It was based in part on my own experiences working for seven years at the capitol as a legislative aide. Never has a story been told like this one from the perspective of father and son. Never has a story involved “quality-of-life” double jeopardy, and the concern over this issue is not as remote as some may think.

Just yesterday the Associated Press released a remarkable report that appeared on The British Daily Mail about a man paralyzed for 23 years who doctors erroneously believed had been in a coma. Like the pregnant woman in Glory, Duty, this man was injured in a car crash, but he was conscious for all these years while the medical community assumed that he was in a “persistent vegetative state.”

Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them – but could make no sound.

‘I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,’ said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegatative state.

‘I dreamed myself away,’ he added, tapping his tale out with the aid of a computer.

Doctors used a range of coma tests before reluctantly concluding that his consciousness was ‘extinct’.

But three years ago, new hi-tech scans showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally.

Mr Houben described the moment as ‘my second birth’. Therapy has since allowed him to tap out messages on a computer screen.

Mr Houben said: ‘All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.’

His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper released by the man who ’saved’ him, top neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys.

‘Medical advances caught up with him,’ said Dr Laureys, who believes there may be many similar cases of false comas around the world.

Indeed, the article goes on to tell of many other similar cases.

Dr Laureys said: ‘In Germany alone each year some 100,000 people suffer from severe traumatic brain injury.

‘About 20,000 are followed by a coma of three weeks or longer. Some of them die, others regain health.

‘But an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people a year remain trapped in an intermediate stage – they go on living without ever coming back again.’

Supporters of euthanasia and assisted suicide argue that people who have lain in persistent vegetative states for years should be given the opportunity to have crucial medical support withdrawn because of the ‘indignity’ of their condition.

But there have been several cases in which people judged to be in vegetative states or deep comas have recovered.

Twenty years ago, Carrie Coons, an 86-year-old from New York, regained consciousness after a year, took small amounts of food by mouth and engaged in conversation.

Only days before her recovery, a judge had granted her family’s request for the removal of the feeding tube which had been keeping her alive.

To see the entire article from The Daily Mail, click here.

To learn more about the new novel from Vision Forum Glory, Duty, & the Gold Dome, click here.