Few issues in bioethics have generated as intense a national debate as the matter of withdrawing artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) from patients diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). According to the classic description first articulated in 1972, patients deemed vegetative are wakeful and reactive but completely unconscious on account of a “cerebral cortex [that] is out of action.” Now, as then, the diagnosis rests upon behavioral assessments made at the bedside, and when the condition persists beyond one year in the case of traumatic injury or three months for non-traumatic etiologies, common practice is to label it “permanent.” The narrative of permanent vegetation (unconsciousness) features prominently in most ethical analyses of the ANH-PVS issue, and for those supportive of treatment withdrawal, it is generally decisive. Whether the appeal is to personhood theory, quality of life, or medical futility, most always the critical assumption is that we are dealing en masse with permanently unconscious patients or, when taken down to the level of the individual patient, that we can have a high degree of confidence that he or she is unconscious and permanently so. The claim here is empirical and twofold as it asserts accuracy in both diagnosis (vegetation) and prognosis (permanency), and given its frequent lynchpin function for deciding the ANH-PVS question, it begs for a careful examination that heretofore has been lacking. In this paper, I propose to critically evaluate the narrative of permanent unconsciousness with a singular focus on the question of empirical warrant. After examining the relevant medical data that has accrued since the PVS syndrome was first described, and giving special attention to research published in the ten years that has now passed since the death of Terri Schiavo, I shall offer a specific conclusion and then discuss its practical ramifications.