If the person doesn't have a living will, as in Terri's case, then I'm all for it, but for the elderly of Florida who have specifically gone to the trouble of having a lawyer draw up legal papers that state they do not want artificial means used to sustain their lives, it's another matter.
I heard Everett Koop once say about the Karen Ann Quinlan case, that we should be very careful to start what we cannot stop.
I would even question the propriety of some of those papers. Did they draw them up while hale and hearty, or while sick and under family/neighbor/someone-to-gain pressure to "get on"? I have an elderly aunt in obvious dementia in a situation like this. Manipulated by her neighbors while family was unaware, and neighbors now have her power of attorney. As mad as a hatter and as foggy as a chilly Boston night, yet somehow the doctors and social workers say she's "competent" (my hiney!)
Koop seems like a nice man, but he was wrong in his AIDS policy. It's a disservice to imply that we should not even try to save patients in dire distress, just because we fear their becoming "vegetables."
And I have always had questions about the Karen Ann Quinlan. She was more accurately described as being "comatose" than is Terri. But IIRC, upon autopsy it was found that far less of her brain had been destroyed than originally thought. I wonder if doctors too soon led her adoptive parents to believe there was no hope, so that therapy was never tried.