April 21, 2005

Persistent vegetative state: diagnosis with an agenda

By Carl Rossini
Most Americans don't know the difference between a severe concussion, a coma, wakeful coma and brain death. But even those of us who have never been to a day of medical school know the difference between a person and a vegetable. A person walks and talks, eats, puts on clothes, takes a shower, goes to work, and has fun in any spare time. A vegetable just lies there in the supermarket, gets sprayed with water, and is eaten. Or, if it gets old, wrinkly or rotten, it is thrown away. Of course, common logic will tell us that, no matter what condition a person is in, he or she will never become a vegetable. Is a dead person a vegetable? Taxonomy charts carried around by botanists don't have spaces for dead people or dead animals, for that matter. Humans and animals do not morph into plants. So, if people are in a wakeful coma (so—called 'persistent vegetative stated or PVS) they don't actually become vegetables. There is not one single instance of people in a wakeful coma finding...(Read Full Article)