It's all just about what you consider "conscious" to be. To be alive, to me, is to be conscious.

One might raise the couple issues with that, and to an extent, they have a point. Such as completely comatose people.

We've recently discovered comatose people are conscious, and are working on ways for them to communicate.

What about people who are kept "alive" only by machines, with no brain activity? I'd consider that person dead. It's only that his organs are being kept stable, in the event he can be recovered, or until the organs get donated.