On the morning of 12 July 1999, Jose C., then thirty-three years old, suddenly fainted when he was about to take a shower. After days of close monitoring in the hospital, during which he showed no sign of consciousness, the doctors concluded that he had suffered a stroke that had left him in a persistent vegetative state. The medical team informed Jose’s wife and family that, given the extensive physiological and neurological damage the stroke had caused, it was highly unlikely he would survive longer than two months.