[DrScump]

"During starvation this metabolic state is a kindness of nature allowing the victim to suffer much reduced pains of hunger while dying."

I hope you have a cite for that, as it ignores the basics of natural selection.

There is no way "nature" would select for a means to reduce the discomfort of starving to death, as death would remove that being from the gene pool, leaving that mechanism out of the gene pool as well.