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Exactly.

People sign those advanced directives who have Dementia!! People sign them with as much thought as if they are filling out a menu check list. There is no procedure to assure that they are competent, can even read, and truly know what they mean.

It is a regulation that the hospitals try to get these things signed. But I suspect deep down, they want them because of the way medicare pays its bills. The hospital benefits if people die pretty quick given the way some billing is done. I can be wrong about that but I do know that you don't have to sign anything but that of course may be no protection.

After all years before in one's callow youth after a few beers in a bar while flirting and watching a bowl game, one might have said, "I would rather be dead than have a feeding tube"

I haven't jumped into this discussion before, because it is so painful to me, after having watched my mother and my only aunt die of cancer last year.

I am an attorney and I know that if a death row inmate (someone who has been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death) decides to give up further appeals and let the sentence be carried out, the courts have ruled that it can't be done unless a judge determines that the inmate is competent to make that decision. If necessary, psychiatric examinations must be conducted in order to ensure that the inmate is making a rational choice.

I guess that is why I'm so concerned that Mr. Schiavo's recollections of what Terri said are being allowed to control the outcome of her life. That kind of evidence would be laughed out of court if it were the only evidence that a condemned prisoner wished to be executed.

I'm also very troubled by many postings on this forum who appear to have equated the starvation and dehydration of Terri with the dying process of someone who is terminally ill with cancer, for whom no treatment is possible. Despite all the morphine and other pain-killing drugs, my mother was not spared the pain of her death. Her doctor at the hospice told me that some of the pain was from her cancer, but that the pain was exacerbated by the drying out of her membranes and tissues as a result of dehydration and starvation. They weren't being cruel to her by denying hydration, it was just that her body couldn't accept it. Terri, on the other hand, does not have a terminal illness that prevents her body from accepting food and hydration. So, to me, starvation and dehydration is a very cruel way for her life to end, and I don't see how anyone who claims to have ever loved her can watch her die that way.

In India it is a common belief that when you go to the hospital you are going to die.

It's the same in America anymore.

Quite possibly people delay their trips to the more formal parts of the hospital with those annoying stops in the Emergency Room because, ta-da, there are other folks around to watch what the doctors do to you.

After all years before in one's callow youth after a few beers in a bar while flirting and watching a bowl game, one might have said, "I would rather be dead than have a feeding tube"

And no one read's you your Miranda rights.

You have the right to remain silent.

You have the right to an attorney being present before any questioning.

If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.

ANYTHING you say CAN and WILL be used against you in a court of law.