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My thoughts exactly. Starvation is a hell of a way to kill somebody.

We treat death row prisoners more humanely then they want to treat Terri.

Death by dehydration seems peaceful, nurses say
Last Updated: 2003-07-24 9:15:26 (Reuters Health)
By Gene Emery

BOSTON (Reuters) - Terminally ill people who opt to end their lives by forgoing food and drink appear to die at least as peacefully as those who end their lives with doctors' help, according to a survey of Oregon hospice nurses released on Wednesday.

The survey -- the first systematic look at what seems to happen when dying patients intentionally refuse food and fluids -- suggests that people facing death have a simple, serene and legal way to end their suffering.

Proposals to legalize physician-assisted suicide have sparked intense controversy in the United States. The practice is only legal statewide in Oregon, where patients wishing to die must get their doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of barbiturates.

The Oregon nurses' survey, published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, looked at an alternative to physician-assisted drug overdoses.

The Oregon Department of Human Services says such overdoses can cause complications like gagging, vomiting or bowel obstruction. Supporters of physician-assisted suicide disagree that the ingestion of drugs causes a painful death.

Study author Linda Ganzini said that until now, some doctors considered voluntary death by dehydration to be a gruesome way to die. But Ganzini, director of the Palliative Care training program at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said the study should change some minds.

"We are not at the point of saying this is a reasonable alternative for everyone," Ganzini told Reuters in an interview. "But it is a possibility for many more patients."

'LITTLE SUFFERING'

Ganzini noted that in hospice patients, the normal thirst and hunger mechanisms may not be intact. If a healthy person were to stop eating and drinking, he would likely suffer more than the terminally ill, she said.

The nurses in the study rated 102 deaths among patients who refused food and fluids, and 55 deaths where the doctor prescribed pills that killed the patient.

On a 10-point scale where zero reflected the most comfort, the nurses typically rated the peacefulness of the dehydration deaths as a two, compared with a five for physician-assisted suicides.

On suffering and pain scales, the nurses said patients who voluntarily stopped food and fluids seemed slightly more comfortable.

"According to the nurses' reports, most deaths from voluntary refusal of food and fluids were peaceful, with little suffering, although 8 percent of patients were thought to have had a relatively poor quality of death," the researchers said.

Study authors conceded that there were several limitations to their research, however. For one, the death reports from hospice nurses were based on memories and perceptions that may have happened up to four years previously.

Most of the patients -- 85 percent -- died within 15 days of giving up food and water.

My thoughts exactly. Starvation is a hell of a way to kill somebody.

It is without a doubt. Especially when the said person has done nothing to deserve "killing".

If a person doesn't die on their own, who is Godly enough on the earth to make that decision for them?

I gasp at the thought of the choices available.

Death row inmates are also accorded a priest and Holy Communion if they want it. Something the judicial would not accord Terri.