"During her starvation, she specifically asked nurses for food. Enter the court...it was determined that Marjorie was not medically competent to retract her advanced directive (in other words, to ask for the "treatment" of food). Thus, even though she had asked to be fed, the starvation was allowed to continue. "
This is HORRIBLE! Thanks for posting it. How much of this is going on that never makes the news!
I guess we better make advanced directive and spell out that nobody better stop feeding us or giving us water!
I suspect it's happening everyday - but unless there's someone to fight for them - for years and have the money to do so - we wont hear about them.
We only knew about Terri because her parents, bless them, would not let them murder her without the last ounce of fighting. There was another high profile case in 1997 in California - the state of the patient was a near mirror image to Terri - and the wife wanted to stop feeding - the mother didn't. There was a court battle that made news across the country, TV, Internet, etc. The Judge who made the life or death decision is a 30+ year friend of mine. A finer, more intelligent and fairer man I have never known. go to the following link to see what he said about his decision:
http://www.angelfire.com/ca7/robertsangels/WendlandToLive.html