The New York Times and others are reporting on an article in Nature about a man who regained the ability to speak after five years in a barely conscious state, thanks to deep brain stimulation. This is an inspiring story. But we should also remember the last section of Gary Greenberg's wonderful Wired piece about DBS. If it's possible that this technique works, when will it then ever be morally possible to pull the plug? If there are more results like the one described in Nature, what will happen with the next Terri Schiavo?
Gary writes in the last section: "Accident victims fill emergency rooms, and it is hard to picture how much more tortuous our decisions will get if new truths about electrical stimulation displace old certainties about hopelessness."
