(Charles C. Camosy, Ph.D. / Religion News Service) — The very concept of “persistent vegetative state” is, first of all, deeply offensive. No living, breathing human being is a vegetable, regardless of how disabled they are. Second, the concept was always a profoundly sloppy category into which many folks with different kinds of brain injuries and diseases were shoved.
If it wasn’t brain death, and it wasn’t a coma, well, maybe it was a vegetative state? Despite this medical and scientific shoddiness, thousands of doctors have told family members that their loved one is in a vegetative state and that, essentially, he or she was no longer there. CONTINUE