Withholding Food and Fluids FAQ
What is the most common method of mercy killing today?
Withholding food and fluids.
How are food and fluids withheld?
A "prime candidate" for euthanasia is someone who is unable to communicate. (Such as someone in a coma or a persistent vegetative state.) Such people usually need assistance in feeding. This typically takes one of two forms.
One, the person may be hand-fed by a hospital worker or family member. In this case, to terminate nutrition they simply stop the hand-feeding.
Two, the person may be on a feeding tube. This is a narrow tube that is either passed through the nose or surgically implanted through the skin into the stomach. In this case, nutrition is stopped by removing the feeding tube.
How long does it take to die?
The average person can survive for about 40 days without food. An obese person can survive longer, as fat cells will gradually break down and provide sustenance.
Removal of fluids will cause a person to die much more quickly, in three to ten days depending on their health and strength.
What happens to someone when food and fluids are withheld?
The following symptoms typically precede death:
Mucuous membrances dry out in the mouth, nose, throat, and genitals. (If you ever been severely thirsty, such as after a period of hard work on a hot day, you have experienced the first stages of this.)
Constipation
Abdominal cramps, nausea and vomiting
Emotional disorders, including depression and confusion
Delusions
Urinary and bowel infections
Bronchitas and pneumonia
Eventually, of course, bodily organs begin to fail and the person dies.
Are these symptoms visible?
Sometimes physicians will take steps to protect family and friends of the patient from seeing unpleasant symptoms. For example, the patient may be given drugs to prevent his body from going into convulsions, as this could be disturbing to those who authorized the euthanasia.
http://www.pregnantpause.org/euth/foodfaq.htmWithholding or Withdrawing Treatment
The issue of withholding or withdrawing treatment first arose during the case of Tony Bland a victim of the Hillsborough disaster, said to be living in a ‘persistent vegetative state’, better described as a ‘persistent non-responsive state’. In the case of Tony Bland the court ruled that his feeding-tube could be withdrawn and he could be starved and dehydrated to death.
By ruling in favour of the withdrawal of the feeding-tube, the court defined food and fluids administered in this way as medical treatment and therefore that Tony Bland was being kept alive by artificial means. Neither food nor fluids can properly be defined as medical treatment; instead they are our basic needs in order to stay alive. To describe tube feeding as medical treatment and an artificial means of keeping someone alive is also misplaced. Tony Bland could not feed himself, however he was capable of digesting his food on his own, he was therefore not receiving nutrition by artificial means. We would not withdraw a feeding-tube from a patient with throat cancer, saying that it is artificially keeping them alive, simply because he/she cannot feed themselves in the usual way.
Treatment can only be withdrawn if receiving it is a greater burden to the patient than the benefit derived from it. This cannot be said of tube feeding. The benefit of receiving food and fluids is that of receiving the nutrition we need to stay alive. This benefit is rarely outweighed by the small or non-existent burden on the patient of tube feeding. Food and fluids only become of no benefit to a patient if they can no longer be digested and thus provide nutrition.
Withdrawing or withholding food and fluids or any other treatment from a patient on any basis other than those stipulated above, is based on the subjective premise that the person’s life is no longer worth living and that they would be better off dead.
http://www.spucscotland.org/education/endoflife/withholdingwithdrawingtreatment.html