Is Ian Still In There?

The story highlights the case of Ian Berg, a teenager whose severe brain injury from a car accident left him in a vegetative state. Despite being unconscious and thought to lack cognitive function, his mother, Eve Baer, struggled with the term 'vegetative', believing her son still had awareness. This case prompts reflection on the nature of consciousness and challenges the notion of such classifications, suggesting that individuals in similar states may be far more conscious than once thought.

When the jaws of life freed him from the wreckage, Ian was still alive, but unconscious. His severe brain injury had put him in a vegetative state.

Eve hated that term, vegetative - an “unhuman-type classification,” she thought. If you had asked her then, she would have said she expected her son to fully recover.

Read at The Atlantic