This BBC story tells of an amazing story: in a small trial, three patients diagnosed with PVS woke up temporarily when given an anti-insomnia drug.
Each of the three patients studied was given the drug every morning.
An improvement was seen within 20 minutes of taking the drug and wore off after four hours, when the patients restored to their permanent [sic] vegetative state.
Notice how the BBC’s culture-of-death mentality appears here, when the writer uses the wrong name for the condition: “permanent vegetative state” vs. the usual “persistent”. Even when the patient has awakened to an obviously conscious condition with the help of a medication, the writer still calls the patient’s uncommunicative state “permanent”.
It appears that the tendency to deny the patient’s humanity and worth is persistent.