Expert: Walter Hintz - 11/10/2006

Question
You may not be the right person I should be asking this, please excuse my ignorance. I am writing a suspense novel and was wondering if there is a way a doctor could inject a person/patient with a solution to keep him in a vegetative state/coma? And what this solution might be called?

Answer
 Hi Simon
Doctors often place patients in a comatose state when there is a serious head injury to aid in the healing process.  Later they return them to consciousness.  Unfortunately I do not know what drugs are used but  I suspect they are barbiturates.  You may be able to find out by googling "inducing comas"