[Cboldt]

But taking this at face value, it's worse than the Schiavo case. Nobody is apparently alleging that the woman is either terminal nor in a PVS.

Interestingly, neither diagnosis (PVS or terminal) is required in Florida either, to justify death by starvation.

Supreme Court of Florida.

In re GUARDIANSHIP OF Estelle M. BROWNING.
STATE of Florida, Petitioner,
v.
Doris F. HERBERT, etc., Respondent.

No. 74174.

Sept. 13, 1990.

BARKETT, Justice.

We have for review In re Guardianship of Browning, 543 So.2d 258 (Fla. 2d DCA 1989), in which the district court certified the following question as one of great public importance:

Whether the guardian of a patient who is incompetent but not in a permanent vegetative state and who suffers from an incurable, but not terminal condition, may exercise the patient's right of self-determination to forego sustenance provided artificially by a nasogastric tube?

Id. at 274. [FN1] We answer the question in the affirmative as qualified in this opinion.

http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/browning.txt <-- Link

Browning was 82 or so, stroke victim. She did have a written advance directive. The patient was not PVS and was not terminal. Florida court system holds that starving these patients to death is legal. Note the decision dates to 1990.

[Dog Gone]

I thought the Schiavo case, while certainly referring to Browning, was centered on the Florida Statutes which provided for removing the feeding tube from someone in a PVS.

I read Browning once, but obviously not close enough. It makes the Florida statute not only unnecessary, but unconstitutionally too strict, it seems.

[agrace]

Now the FL statutes (chapter #765) DO include PVS as an acceptable condition for removal of life support - they were revised in 1999, along with the term "artificial nutrition" added to life support definitions. Lobbied for by Felos, who was representing one Michael Schiavo.

Convenient, huh.