And then there was Luke, who washed the floor in a comatose young man's room twice because the man's father, who had been keeping a vigil for six months, didn't see Luke do it the first time, and his father was angry.

In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi precipitated a constitutional crisis by trying to rush through emergency legislation to prevent a comatose patient from being taken off life support. This reminded many observers of what the America s Republican Party tried to do in order to demonstrate its pro life commitments during George W. Bush s presidency.

From my family looking in from outside, what they're trying to figure out is a different kind of existential question, which is, how far is it going to be possible to bridge from the comatose potential mind that they're looking at to an actual mind, which I define simply as the functioning of the brain that is remaining inside my head.