Please Try and Help Terri...... 4117

That's against the Hippocratic Oath too (modern version):

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And

Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and rest. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God. . I.e. you're forbidden from deciding whether the patient should live or die. (I think that means expressly forbidden from witholding treatment with an aim to cause rest).

Well - it is in agreement with the Hippocratic versions. One is not allowed to over-treat a patient, defined as cases where the potential benefits accruable do not match the efforts made.

I am surprised at that. It is taking a deliberate witholding of sustenance to slowly kill a woman who is not in pain, and who is unable to defend or feed herself (or shamble along the street). Yep, she won't get better and yes she is in a drooling idiot state, but she isn't "asleep", and her parents want her to be alive thank you. Applying contagion would be more merciful (and also is expressly forbidden by the ancient version of the Hippocratic Oath).

I am surprised that anyone feels themselves able to form a competent judgment as to whether she is alive in any meaningful sense. I know I don't feel I can. But I do know that her parents feel she is alive and are fighting for her, and I also know that her parents motives MUST be purely altruistic, by definition.

Peter