Horrifying.

Just horrifying:

A car crash victim diagnosed as being in a coma for the past 23 years has been conscious the whole time. Rom Houben was paralysed but had no way of letting doctors know that he could hear every word they were saying. 'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,' said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegatative state.
...
His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper released by the man who 'saved' him, top neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys. 'Medical advances caught up with him,' said Dr Laureys, who believes there may be many similar cases of false comas around the world.

It's hard to conceive of living through that.

Professor Reynolds notes a commenter at Althouse's blog saying "Lucky that they weren’t more ‘compassionate’ and didn’t try to starve and dehydrate him to death." Given the negative attention he paid to the Republicans over the Terry Schiavo situation, and the importance he placed on it as a negative for Republicans in the run-up to, and aftermath of, the 2006 congressional elections, one wonders if a little more commentary might be appropriate here.