Comment on: Stopping Eating and Drinking by Advance Directives: Choose Your Injustice

This case is not an ambiguous one. I think that in real life very few physicians would implement an order to withhold food and sedate someone who still appears to want food, can still feed himself, and is able to swallow safely like Bill in this vignette. That would probably be a criminal act. But it gets a lot more complicated when the person does not appear to desire food and is unable to put food or fluids into his own mouth, even when it is offered by being placed on a tray in front of him. And the situation becomes more complicated still when the person appears to be experiencing severe suffering in other ways or is having severe difficulties swallowing.