BEHIND THE STORY: Waking the Brain

The “Waking the Brain” story had its origins in studies that reporter, Beatrice Politi and Producer, Claude Adams came across that questioned the whole concept of what doctors refer to as the “vegetative” state—the brain that supposedly is no longer functioning. The classic Canadian example of this is Trevor Greene, the soldier who was almost killed in an axe attack while serving in Afghanistan in 2006. Greene’s brain was horribly damaged, but brain scans discovered cognitive activity, and today, he is making a remarkable recovery. Greene’s story is well known. The stories of Leonard Rodrigues, Rohan Pais and Kate Bainbridge are less well known, but Claude thought they needed to be told—to make the point that serious brain injury need not be a sentence of death, or even permanent disability.