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There's an investigative podcast — called "Room 20" — about a man, presumed to be in a vegetative state, unidentified & kept on life support for 15 years. The bulk of the series focuses on other issues, but I'm left horrified by one simple fact:
Though he is severely & irrecoverably brain damaged, he is likely sensitive to pain. 6-8 times per day, he is subjected to a trachea suctioning procedure necessary to keep him alive but so distressing that his nurse describes it as akin to waterboarding.
He can hear, but not understand language. He can see, but not understand the purpose of objects around him. He lays in a bed, largely incapable of motion & generally without visitors, & to keep him from dying he is tortured every day for years. And will be until he dies.
Apparently the cost to the state of doing this to this man — whose mental "age" is estimated at ~2 — has exceeded $4 million. It's like a sicker version of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, where torturing an innocent accomplishes nothing but fulfilling broad legal obligations
I'm really fucked up over this and have no idea what can be done about it
There's something else, central to the way the host frames the narrative: his identity is discovered, and he's undocumented; an illegal immigrant. She doesn't share his full name, because he would likely be deported, which would of course likely result in his death. Yeah.
In today's fear-mongering environment in which both major political parties demonize legal medicine, he's also probably denied pain relief, because someone thinks a heroin user will be "saved" through his suffering (or some percentage of all heroin users, on average).
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