Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

we wish it were otherwise, but: if your son had a brain injury where cells died, no amount of oxygen is going to bring them back (or even help his recovery).

i'm sorry for your son's circumstances (and yours...). But you are a victim twice when you invest time, energy, money, and hope in these quack therapies (I'm sorry to call them that, because it seems so pejorative, but that's what they are).

i don't know what it is about quack treatments that make us so susceptible to them... I think it's a missing piece of the Kubler Ross model of grief. Just like our parents who fall victims to ridiculous "nigerian prince" or "check cashing" scams when you can't understand how... it's not because they are dumb, or stupid, but because there is some aspect of human psychology (hope? denial? grief? whatever...) that puts us all at risk of fooling ourselves... we become unable to see the truth, because of how powerfully we want to see something else.

i hope this possibility makes sense to you, because your son will benefit a thousand times more from your attention than if you take the same attention and spend it fighting against "the system" (in whatever form it takes). and take comfort in the fact that even though "the system" really sucks in terms of its limitations, that it does, in general, stumble toward progress, and the future will be better than the present.

Until then... cherish your son and enjoy your time with him to the best of your mutual abilities.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model

Another way to think about it is as witness testimony.

When you do a logical, mathematical proof, you are building on a well-defined and well-known set of axioms, using well-defined steps of logical inference. With a few well-known exceptions, we don't argue over mathematical proofs. Either the logic flows from the axioms or it doesn't.

Once you step away from pure mathematics, you no longer have a small number of well-defined axioms or clear inference. Instead you have a lot of what amounts to witness testimony. Sometimes, you recount an observation. "X drowned and was dead for 15 minutes." "X had brain damage." "X fully recovered." It is reasonable to dispute these statements based on the credibility of the person making them.

Some of these statements may be the product of inference, which is also less clear than logical inference. For instance, "X has brain damage." might have been inferred from "An MRI of X looked like Y." and "Y indicates severe brain damage." Now you have a host of ways where the statement could be wrong, based on the reliability of the person making the observation and the inference. Did the person actually take an MRI, or were they lying about it, or did they misread it, or did they actually rely on a third-party who did one or the other? Is the inference method "Y indicates severe brain damage" valid? Did the person in question correctly apply it?

People don't like to attack the credibility of others; it seems mean and it can easily slip into elitism. But examining the credibility of someone presenting evidence is absolutely critical to truth-finding. Personal integrity is an absolute necessity, in science, medicine, and law.

Like most "alternative" medicines this one gets pushed hard as a solution for everything, regardless of evidence.

    I profoundly belive that people who do science must be atheists