Scientists have been able to reach into the mind of a brain-damaged man and communicate with his thoughts.
The research, carried out at in the UK and in Belgium, involved a new brain scanning method.
Awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.
The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be closed off from the world.
Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage.
Read more @ BBC News
so does that now bring about a change in awareness perhaps that 'pulling the plug on a vegetative patient' is no longer an option as they can still communicate to the outside world like this patient communicating after 5 years .... "Not only did these scans tell us that the patient was not in a vegetative state" (sky news article) .. so there may be in the future a way for so called vegetative patients to communicate on a regular basis.
so main question is that should vegetative patients be pulled off life support machines regardless of whether the family is in favor of it or not.