WOMAN WHO WAS ALMOST DIAGNOSED AS “PERSISTENTLY VEGETATIVE” SPEAKS TO NPR. This link, which I can’t listen to but you should, I got via a characteristically sound piece on Terri Schiavo from Mickey Kaus. (I don’t know how to permalink him, but scroll down to “NPR vs. NPR.”)

Excerpts from the Kaus post: “I was just growing more sympathetic to the cause of those who want to pull the plug on Terri Schiavo–then I heard an eye-opening interview on NPR’s Day to Day with a woman who says she was near to being diagnosed as being in a ‘persistent vegetative state’ and was trying desperately to signal her doctors and nurses while they debated the most convenient time to kill her–sorry, I mean, exercise her ‘right to die.’ If she tried to make repetitive letter motions with her hand, they sedated her. … She was finally saved by one nurse who suspected she ‘was in there’ and gathered evidence to ‘prove’ it. [I’ve interviewed one such successful nurse–Eve]… How does a) the number of innocent people who will be executed under death penalty procedures compare with b) the number of innocent, live patients who will be killed under a tendentious diagnosis of PVS?”

The whole post is very much worth your time.