ANSWER: The“living will" provides a legal method in some thirty-seven states for terminating life support systems in the case of individuals who are dying because of serious iliness or accident. The pain of family members or friends in comas over long periods of time and in a"persistent vegetative state” while attached to life preserving machinery has led to the consideration of such documents. At that juncture, often no one will agree on what should be done. In some occasions the courts have intervened; in others eventually a family member or physician intervenes, but at the risk of subsequent legal action.
Those who wish to spare their family from this agonizing
decision may decide on a living will, a form frequently used with a proxy designation statement that reads as follows:
Living Will Declaration To My Family, Physician, and Medical Facility
,, being of sound mind, voluntarily make known my desire that my dying shall not be artificially prolonged under the following circumstances:
If I should have an injury, disease or illness regarded by my physician as incurable and terminal, and if my physician determines that the application of life-sustaining procedures would serve only to prolong artificially the dying process, I direct that such procedures be withheld or withdrawn and that I be permitted to die. I want treatment limited to those measures that will provide me with maximum comfort and freedom from pain. Should I