Is it offensive to call someone a vegetable?
Vegetable: Use people-first language, such as “a person in a vegetative state.” Avoid referring to someone as a vegetable or “veg” as such words dehumanize the person.
What does it mean when someone is referred to as a vegetable?
If someone refers to a brain-damaged person as a vegetable, they mean that the person cannot move, think, or speak. [informal, offensive]
Why do they call brain dead people a vegetable?
In plants, there are no lungs, heart, or brain. But there is continuous respiration, the uptake of oxygen and giving off carbon dioxide, and is fully alive. A fruit or vegetable is indeed undergoing respiration when on the tree and in continuous growth and development, and still respiring, even after it is picked.
Where does the word vegetative come from?
vegetative (adj.) late 14c., “endowed with the power of growth,” from Old French vegetatif “(naturally) growing,” from Medieval Latin vegetativus, from vegetat-, past participle stem of vegetare (see vegetable (adj.)).
Can you legally pull the plug on a brain dead person?
There is no such thing as “brain death” and “real death.” It’s all just death. When someone is declared brain dead, that person is legally dead. In no state that I have worked would you have any legal standing to not “pull the plug.” The reason is that the person is dead.
What is locked in syndrome?
Locked-in syndrome is a rare neurological disorder in which there is complete paralysis of all voluntary muscles except for the ones that control the movements of the eyes.
What is the longest time someone was in a coma and woke up?
Terry Wallis (born 1964). This American man was in a coma for nearly a year after a truck accident, then a minimally conscious state for 19 years.
Can a person in a vegetative state hear you?
Other studies have shown that up to 20 percent of patients in various vegetative states can hear and respond on at least some level. But at least some of the responses seen could be dismissed as simple reflexes, or at best akin to someone in a dream state responding to stimuli.
What is Weber Syndrome?
Weber syndrome, classically described as a midbrain stroke syndrome and superior alternating hemiplegia, involves oculomotor fascicles in the interpeduncular cisterns and cerebral peduncle, thereby causing ipsilateral third nerve palsy with contralateral hemiparesis.
What is alien hand syndrome?
Alien hand syndrome is defined as unwilled, uncontrollable, but seemingly purposeful movements of an upper limb. Two major criteria for the diagnosis are complaint of a foreign limb and complex, autonomous, involuntary motor activity that is not part of an identifiable movement disorder.
Can you pull the plug on someone in a vegetative state?
This means the patient would be unable to cough or swallow or breathe on her own, whereas a patient in a vegetative state may be able to do one or all of those three things, DiGeorgia said. “Pulling the plug” would render the patient unable to breathe, and the heart would stop beating within minutes, he said.
Can a person in a coma cry?
A comatose patient may open his eyes, move and even cry while still remaining unconscious. His brain-stem reflexes are attached to a nonfunctioning cortex. Reflex without reflection. Many professionals speak of this condition as a ”persistent vegetative state.
How do you refer to a person in a vegetative state?
Vegetable: Use people-first language, such as “a person in a vegetative state.” Avoid referring to someone as a vegetable or “veg” as such words dehumanize the person. See entry on vegetative state/comatose/non-responsive .
When did the term “vegetative state” become popular?
Below is her illuminating response. The term “vegetative state” became popular at the “birth” of bioethics (1978 Belmont Report).
Do people become vegetables?
People do not become vegetables. Ever. Tomatoes and carrots do not become human beings. It is dangerous that this terminology has crept into the health care system. The word should be excised immediately from all medical writings and discussions. Potatoes do not have dignity. Human beings do.
Why do we still call the poor vulnerable patients vegetables?
So, the current efforts to call these poor vulnerable patients “vegetables” cannot be sustained academically or philosophically any more than can “delayed personhood” at the beginning of life. The only reason these terms continue to be used is purely political.