Foregoing artificial hydration and nutrition : a new euthanasia?

Abstract

A patient, more often than not, in an intensive care unit, sedated and comatose, or nearly so, chained and haltered by tubes to an array of bleeping machinery, is the familiar example of institutional dying in our high-tech facilities. What is the best care for a patient in such a condition? What is the moral balance between preserving life and preventing suffering? Should life be preserved regardless of the circumstances? Should patients whose lives are preserved only through nasogastric feeding and hydrating tubes be allowed to die by withholding these life-sustaining treatments and machinery in an act of mercy, when death is inevitable and the dying process is so anguishing? Should the quality of life of the patient be taken into account? Is the sanctity of life the only criterion? [...]