 One implication of this proposal is that harvesting organs from PVS patients, thereby killing them, would not be punishable insofar as these patients, having irrevocably lost the capacity for consciousness, have already suffered “the great loss” and no longer possess moral status. Some attracted to this approach will want to argue further that the crime of murder is really that of causing the irrevocable loss of the capacity for consciousness without first obtaining voluntary, informed consent from the person to be killed. The italicized qualification would create conceptual space for a justification of active euthanasia (see the entry on  voluntary euthanasia).