Ok since no one asked for it, a bit on Terri Schiavo, the florida chick.

First some important points.
1990 She colapsed and became what some are calling profoundly cognitively disabled, this is a nice term for brain dead.
Today its 2005, so by some simple math she has been in this state for the last 15 years. If some miracle was going to happen I would think thats enough time to wait.

Now some make the claim that she is responsive. So what does this really mean? Examples are listed as:
Doctor asks her to open her eyes and she does.
Doctor asks her to follow a baloon with her eyes, she does.
Mother kisses her cheek and she smiles.

Now on the surface these give the appearance that some thinking may be going on there, but you have to understand that these are uncontrolled experiments and you are seeing the best she has to offer.

What we need to determine is if she is actually concusious of what is going on or is she just responding to generic stimulus.
Does anyone speaking to her or near her cause her to open her eyes? This could easily just be a reflex to noise.
Does she follow any object waved in front of her? For instance if you wave a pen and a balloon and ask her to follow the pen and not the baloon can she do that? How about if you put a flashing light by her then see if she can follow the baloon or if she just stares at the light?
Do kisses from anyone make her smile? How about dog kisses? Or when you lick you thumb and touch her cheek with it and make kissy sounds? Can any sort of contact make her smile? Does she smile without stimulus?

Anyway, fact of the matter is all of these examples are the best anyone could come up with in the last 15 years, or if they didn't start looking until this whole trial stuff started, the last few months. These are pathetic examples to show that someone is still cognitative.

Its been 15 years, let the woman die already.