Julie Grimstad, Executive Director / Life is Worth Living, Inc.
Human beings are not "vegetables." The dehumanizing term "persistent vegetative state" (PVS), crafted in 1972, became more familiar in the 1980s as "right to die" activists, courts, state legislatures, physicians and bioethicists began to use the PVS label as justification for withdrawing food and fluids from persistently unresponsive patients. PVS is a diagnosis that kills people.
Date posted: 2014-05-27