I think I understand what you are saying and, although my current thoughts are a mess, would have readily agreed with you two weeks ago.

The gray area comes from when exactly 1 should be transitioned to 0. If someone no longer has intellect but has consciousness, it's pretty hard to unhook machines that will gaurantee the transfer to death. If someone has almost no consciousness but to the family seems like they do some of the time, that can be an uncomfortably long time.

This little girl will never laugh or walk again, her family knows that. And it sounds like to them they are, in their minds, ready to let go when she is no longer responding: ie, no more consciousness. The trouble is what seems like non consciousness spasms to some looks an awful lot like periodic consciousness to others.

I don't think we're comfortable reclassifying death as "unable to demonstrate consciousness after X months" or "can't obey requests after x minutes". The article shows some aren't comfortable with defining death as lack of MRI evidence for brain activity. So what should it be? When x percentage of the brain becomes liquified?