Are PVS Patients Unconscious?
It is commonly assumed that PVS patients are unconscious and therefore unaware of themselves and/or their environments. This belief is central to many arguments favoring withholding or withdrawing food and fluids from PVS patients, including those by Christian authors. The MSTF reiterated this position: “Patients in a coma are unconscious because they lack both wakefulness and awareness. Patients in a vegetative state are unconscious because, although they are wakeful, they lack awareness.”[23] But how is this determined? A central problem in the MSTF argument is that it equates the lack of behavioral evidence for consciousness with the absence of consciousness. But consciousness is completely compatible with a lack of evidence for it. However, even when evidence would suggest consciousness, the MSTF quickly disregarded it. There are strongly held beliefs underlying these discussions and evaluations. Unfortunately, they are often not clearly expressed. For example, after listing the ma
