All posts tagged: vegetative state

The end of ‘persistent vegetative state’?

The end of ‘persistent vegetative state’?

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — 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. Indeed, at the conclusion of the most public fight over this idea — that of Terri Schiavo’s parents vs. her husband — her legally victorious husband (who wanted Terri to stop getting food and water despite her parents wanting to care for her) wrote on her tombstone that she “departed this earth” on Feb. 25, 1990, when she had her massive brain trauma and was “at peace” March 31, 2005, when she was starved …

50 years ago, Karen Quinlan’s coma sparked the movement for patients’ rights near the end of life

50 years ago, Karen Quinlan’s coma sparked the movement for patients’ rights near the end of life

Published by Sam Flores

(The Conversation) — March 31, 2026, marks 50 years since a landmark decision that shapes American patients’ rights every day: the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling in the case of Karen Ann Quinlan, who had suffered an irreversible coma. Quinlan’s case established for the first time that decisions near the end of life should be made by patients and families, not by doctors and hospitals alone. As a bioethicist, I have taught and written extensively about the profound impact the Quinlan case has had on law, bioethics and the pursuit of death with dignity. The Quinlan story In April 1975, at the age of 21, Karen Ann Quinlan suffered a cardiac arrest and loss of oxygen to the brain while at a friend’s party. After she had gone to bed, friends discovered that she had stopped breathing, and she was rushed to the hospital. After a while, doctors determined that Quinlan was in a persistent vegetative state: a condition in which all cognitive functions of the brain have been lost and the patient has no …