HASTINGS CENTER REPORT 23 March-April 2005 among some practitioners to act paternalistically and label some who might be minimally conscious as vegetative. By being categorical, the more difficult choices are side-stepped and the morass of the minimally conscious state is avoided. With “no hope for meaningful recovery,” care can be withdrawn. But even if this is true—and it may be, since a patient in a minimally conscious state may indeed have no hope for meaningful recovery—our greater level of knowledge about these conditions calls for more diagnostic clarity. Diagnostic distortion has also been used to undermine the right to die. In Schiavo, right to life advocates asserted that she was not vegetative. By suggesting consciousness where there was none, these opponents of choice at the end of life cast doubt on the ethical propriety of removing life-sustaining therapy. They persisted even though court-appointed physicians found that she was vegetative, and even when the Florida Supreme Court determined that there was clear and convincing evidence for this diagnosis.