In 1992, a failure to put anything to the contrary in writing was an unambiguous affirmation of one's desire to be given food and water. It's only retroactively that any sort of oral declaration from that era has been deemed to mean anything.
"In 1992, a failure to put anything to the contrary in writing was an unambiguous affirmation of one's desire to be given food and water. It's only retroactively that any sort of oral declaration from that era has been deemed to mean anything."
That hasn't been true since at least 1986 and the Court's decision in Corbett v. Alessandro, where the appellate Court held that patients have a right to refuse medical treatment based on the right to privacy found in both the Florida Constitution (Article I, section 23) and the U.S. Constitution. The court specifically found that artificial feeding fell into the category of "extraordinary treatment" that could be withheld or withdrawn, without limitation by the legislature. The court also found that patients like Corbett (in a PVS, with no reasonable prospect of regaining cognitive brain function) may have their right to refuse treatment put into effect by a third party. In Corbett, the third party was the patient's husband.
[Corbett v. Alessandro, 487 So. 2d 368 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App.), review denied, 492 So. 2d 1331 (Fla. 1986)].
This was reiterated in 1990 with the decision in In re Guardianship of Browning. The Florida Supreme Court declared that an individual has the right to refuse medical treatment, regardless of his or her medical condition. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Cruzan v. Missouri Department of Health, charged the judicial system with being the “fact finder” to determine if a terminally ill person clearly intended to be kept alive artificially. The ACLU filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief in that case, which granted Nancy Cruzan the right to have her feeding tube removed based on “clear and convincing” evidence that she would not have wanted to prolong her life by such invasive means.
Thus surrogate or proxy may exercise the constitutional right of privacy for an incompetent person who, while competent, expressed his or her wishes to discontinue artificial life-prolonging procedures.
[In re Guardianship of Browning, 568 So. 2d 4 (Fla. 1990). Court Florida Supreme Court Year 1990]
So in 1992 "a failure to put anything to the contrary in writing" was NOT an "unambiguous affirmation of one's desire to be given food and water", and an oral declaration did indeed mean something.