Conversations possible with vegetative state patients

Professor Adrian Owen of the Medical Research CouncilCognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge has announced:  "Our findings show that this [electroencephalography] method can identify covert awareness in patients diagnosed in the vegetative state with a similar degree of accuracy to other methods of detection; it is a considerably cheaper and more portable bedside technique.  "This method could reach all vegetative patients and fundamentally change their bedside assessment" and could even open "routine two-way communication" with some patients.  [Telegraph]

I have long agreed with Larry Schneiderman that medical treatment for patients confirmed to be PVS is inappropriate.  It should not be covered by public insurance programs.  It should not be provided by healthcare providers, except as a special accommodation.  But these neuroscience findings raise more questions like those raised by earlier fMRI studies about the nature of the vegetative state.