vegetative state

Many of the patients were labeled with the same grim diagnosis: "vegetative state." Their head injuries, teams of specialists had concluded, condemned them to a netherworld -- alive yet utterly devoid of any awareness of the world around them.

BRUSSELS (AP) -- A mother says her son has emerged from what doctors thought was a vegetative state to say he was fully conscious for 23 years but could not respond because he was paralyzed....