(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 …