Re. your comment:
Actually, it is spot on relevant, and it is not hypothetical at all. If Terri had an advance directive of the model florida form, this would have come off without so much as a trial.
I don't understand. What could Terri have put in a will?
"I hereby declare that if I should become brain-damaged and unable to care for myself yet still be able to breathe on my own, laugh, and speak; and if therapy and the company of my family were withheld from me by my husband; and if a plethora of doctors had differing opinions on my state of conciousness and ability to feel pain and emotion; then, henceforth, it is my will that sustenance (both liquid and solid) be withheld from me over a period of several days such that once dehydration and starvation have run their course, I shall be cremated posthaste."
?
The boilerplate language if the Florida Statutes, for preparing an Advance Directive, would result in exactly this result. However, the language is a bit different. It says, in part ...
and if my attending or treating physician and another consulting physician have determined that there is no reasonable medical probability of my recovery from such condition, I direct that life-prolonging procedures be withheld or withdrawn when the application of such procedures would serve only to prolong artificially the process of dying, and that I be permitted to die naturally with only the administration of medication or the performance of any medical procedure deemed necessary to provide me with comfort care or to alleviate pain.
The terms "life prologing procedure" and "be permitted to die naturally" are where I have a problem. Very few people understand the ramifications of those terms of art, to include that "dying naturally" really means "death by starvation."
MS should have had 60 Minutes create that for him. "Living Will" in hand it would have been over already.
A Living Will starved and dehydrated to my stepfather in a FL hospice last Aug. Even though my mother told them he did NOT know extraordinary measures meant no food or water and would never have signed if he had been told that. Both my folks had a LW and thought it meant DNR. My mother has pulled hers.
I understand from reading on FR that my family have MS to thank for that. He had the law changed to facilitate killing Terri and offed my stepfather too. Wonder how many others?