I personally have never seen so many "debaters" practicing medicine without a license. I never knew there were so many licensed radiologists posting here as they bandied about the brain scans and EEG's as proof of "PVS".
You've put your finger on a big part of the problem... and the main reason ~I~ felt pretty reluctant to profess to really know what the situation with Terri was. I don't know. I don't have the education or qualifications to know, nor have I seen many who do. It's hard to weed out the educated opinion from the uneducated guess and speculation. I've seen precious few who seem to even have much life experience with medicine or dying.
I worked for a short time for a Hospice facility. In administration, but I still heard much conversation and records of people and situations. I will state without reservation that the nurses and aids in hospice seemed to me to be a group of particularly caring and giving people who provided their very best of themselves in caring for the dying. But at the same time, I know there is a difference between pure hospice care for the dying and curative care. There is an important legal and insurance difference. Patients accepted into hospice are not allowed therapies that are intended to be curative, and patients who are still seeking a cure to their disease are not allowed hospice coverage or care, and yet they may be refused coverage for curative therapies not directed by a doctor. There definately are patients who end up in a sortof limbo between hospitalization, nursing home or hospice, where there is debate within a patient, and within families on where they rightfully should be.