[supercat]

I believe she has been examined by court-appointed neurologists who claim that she is PVS. That may be the case if she is now worse than the videos suggest, or if the videos are misleading. Unfortunately, her parents have chosen to associate with a group of doctors who are, to be polite, out of the mainstream in their practices and I don't trust their evaluations.

I believe the doctor Greer appointed is/was a member of the Hemlock Society or whatever the group is now called. I will agree that some of the parents' choices of doctors haven't been the best, but they've tried to make do with what they could get.

What should be clear, though, is that a 45-minute examination by a doctor is not enough to make a diagnosis that someone is in an incurable vegetative state. Indeed, there are some mornings where I'd probably be diagnosed PVS if the doctor caught me too soon after I got out of bed.

Key point: someone who is cognitive 1% of the time and vegetative 99% of the time is not PVS. Even if a 45-minute examination comes up "vegetative", that does not imply that the patient is vegetative >99% of the time.

[Toskrin]

What should be clear, though, is that a 45-minute examination by a doctor is not enough to make a diagnosis that someone is in an incurable vegetative state.

Agreed, but the length of the exam is not the most important thing. The patient will probably be the same at the start of the forty-five minutes as at the end. More important is seeing the patient over time, on different days and at different times. The doctor also has to rely on the observations of reliable staff for the assessment. If five nurses tell you the patient talked, then they're not PVS, even if the doctor didn't see it.