Richard Rudd, 43, was severely injured when his motorcycle was hit by a car that pulled out in front of him in October 2009. He had made it clear to family that if he was ever badly injured he would not want to be kept on life support machines. But when his family was asked to make that decision by doctors in Cambridge, after three weeks where the younger Rudd appeared to be brain-dead, hospital staff gathered around his bed noticed that he blinked. A doctor was then able to ask him to move his eyelids to respond to the question of whether he wished to continue to live, and three times he “answered” yes with eye movements. Richard Rudd’s story is the subject of a BBC documentary that aired in the UK Tuesday 13 July.

Ed. note: An excerpt of the film appears on the BBC web site, with the story.

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