Published March 23, 2005 New York Times, Meet Theresa Devera The Times would have us believe brain death is proven science resting on a vast body of empirical evidence. No one ever comes back from brain death. Brain dead is dead. To suggest otherwise is to present false hope. By the monolithic view of the Times it was false hope which led Ruby Devera of Los Angeles to refuse permission for removal of her daughter's respirator after doctors declared her brain dead. Theresa's beyond hope, the doctors told Mrs. Devera. Her brain is dead. Surrender to it. Permit her organs to be harvested. Bring something redemptive out of your personal tragedy. Yet, against all prognostications, Theresa survived. Three months after being declared brain dead she came back from whence the New York Times says there is no return. She returned to visibly sentient life. I met her outside the hospice where Terri Schiavo was being killed in Florida where she had come with her mother to protest Terris murder. Theresa moves via wheelchair. She writes and speaks and moves freely from the waist up. She possesses obvious intelligence and is a recent college graduate. Nor was Theresa the only young person I met in Pinellas Park who had come there from a hospital where they were once declared brain dead. The day Terris feeding tube was pulled and her slow-motion murder began, a mother brought a son in his early twenties who had recently been declared brain dead. In both cases a declaration of brain death was quickly followed by doctors urging the parents to permit harvesting of organs. In bother cases parents refused. Why do doctors keep patients on respirators after declaring brain death? More often than you might suspect they do so hoping that over time parents will relent and permit organs to be harvested. Spend some time in traumatic brain injury (TBI) chat rooms on the web and you will find this story frequently repeated. Young people communicating with each other via the web are alive today because their parents didnt give up hope when others told them to, because their parents persisted in holding to what the New York Times assures us is a false hope.