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The eyes of a road traffic accident victim have been observed tracing a moving object. They can't call her a PVS (persistent vegetative state) patient because PVS patients don't do that. Instead, she has been diagnosed as "Near vegetative" ("Is a flicker of life enough?" Guardian, 16.11.96)

Her health authority want to kill her anyway. They are considering asking the High Court to let them withdraw her feeding equipment.

It is not certain whether tracking with eyes indicates awareness.

Awareness used to be an important issue in euthanasia. Remember Anthony Bland? No awareness, we were assured. No awareness means no pain but they killed him anyway.

Now Professor Bryan Jennett is on a different tack. "We ought to consider the patients' bests interest and whether having some slight degree of awareness might not make their predicament worse than if they were unaware." (Guardian, same article).

There's nothing like having it both ways.

Either pro deathers kill somebody because they haven't even a slight degree of awareness. Or else because they have.

And how do you decide what's "slight", anyway?  

Two things stay constant in these agonising moral dilemmas. Cost and helplessness.

Diana E. Forrest - November 1996