I'm guessing you're being down-voted for the way you expressed your sympathy, but if it were me, I'd want some brave family member to consider ending my misery. I certainly wouldn't want to be "trapped" in a non-functioning body unless there was a good chance I'd recover at some point.

It's good to hear he's not in pain, but what would they do if he expressed a desire to be "put out of his misery" via the fMRI?

There's enough bandwidth for yes-or-no questions, right? I wonder if anyone will ever come up with the courage to ask such a patient "Do you want to die?"

Would it really be a much different case than with people who are fully capable (without technical help) to express their desire to die?

For one, some people might prefer "this misery" to nothingness. Have you asked that particular guy?

Second, there have been cases of people in states like this for years, who then made a surprising recovery. Like this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/05/06/firefighter-miracle-...

Or this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230092/Rom-Houben-P...

But what I don't particularly like about that line of thinking, is this: medicine thrived and grew on a quest to fight disease and death. The talk about "pulling the plug" and euthanasia opens a huge "Overton Window" that can go from not treating terminally ill patients to eugenics.