It is not uncommon for family members to substitute false hopes of cure for a realistic appraisal of the patient's prospects for recovery of consciousness.
Such a question gives parents false hopes and unrealistic expectations, expectations that inevitably lead to demands for more and more interventions and the risk of further complications.
When a potential new therapy holds out promise of dramatic cures we should, of course, be cautious, if only to dampen false hopes of an early treatment.
Unlike objects that could be examined in the field or brought home for study, such reports were difficult to assess, although quite capable of exciting false hopes for a time.
In this area, far too many false hopes have been awakened for many years, instead of genuinely looking at alternatives.
I also realise that it must be based on realism and that false hopes should not be created.
This is the weakness in this concept, and nothing would be worse than raising false hopes here.
All this does is to give false hopes to the general public which it will then be impossible to fulfil.
