[robertpaulsen]

"Precise word usage is critically important."

I agree. Which is why I questioned your (incorrect) statement, "the pills work on people in a PVS".

"The terms "brain dead" and "PVS" have medical and legal meaning."

Yes, and so do the terms "brain damaged", "severly brain damaged", "vegetative state", and "persistent vegetative state".

"A "brain-dead" person is dead. A person in a PVS is not."

Correct. But they do have things in common. Neither will recover. Both are on artificial life support. Neither has consciousness or ever will again.

And both are using valuable and precious hospital resources that can be better used to keep alive someone who has a chance at living.

[swmobuffalo]

"Correct. But they do have things in common. Neither will recover. Both are on artificial life support. Neither has consciousness or ever will again.

And both are using valuable and precious hospital resources that can be better used to keep alive someone who has a chance at living."


PVS patients have a chance at recovery. PVS patients breath on their own, hence the only "artificial support" is water and food. PVS patients have been proved by EEG tests to have a highlevel of brain activity.

I am sincerely glad I'm not related to you and you have no chance of ever being involved in a life changing decision that would pertain to me.

[Ohioan from Florida]

Neither will recover. Both are on artificial life support. Neither has consciousness or ever will again.

This is your opinion. It is not fact.

If it were fact, then patients in a PVS would never regain consciousness, but sometimes, yes, sometimes, they do. You've made a blanket statement and try to apply it to all cases.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

You're right that I should have said: "the pills may work on people in a PVS". We'll know soon enough.

A brain dead person will never recover. Several PVS patients have already recovered. The subject experiment will test whether a pill will make a PVS patient conscious.

The brain-dead are dead -- some life signs are maintained through artificial "life support". PVS patients are still alive; but they can't swallow -- they need food and water. When food and water is defined as "artificial life support"; so that it can be withheld from PVS patients; who else should they be withheld from? Nursing babies? The frail elderly? Quadriplegics?

The type of triage you advocate is one of the most frightening thing about living in a country with a government health care monopoly. "Precious hospital resources" need never be scarce, so long as we can cull increasingly large numbers of patients.