Jim Benton Cartoons by Jim Benton for January 31, 2015

Current U.S. law is that if you can still swallow liquids, hospitals can’t cut off nutrition even if you’ve signed a living “death with dignity” document.You don’t need teeth to swallow liquids. But it helps.

I want my state to pass a “death with dignity” option. For when my time has come.IMO. :) Peace.

That guy in the chair…. He foolishly took his doctor’s advice about how clean living, avoiding pizza and bacon, and taking few risks would add twenty years to his life. Those are the twenty years. Happy now? .Gimme pizza, danger, and lots and lots of sin, and keep your twenty miserable years.

This is a discussion regarding dementia or Alzheimer’s. If someone is in a coma, or otherwise on life support, a living will can be used to allow the family to authorize “pulling the plug”. Removing life support will cause the patient’s body to die a short time later. But, in the case of dementia, most brain activity will degrade while the person’s body can continue on for decades. A number of older people (70’s and 80’s) seeing this happen to other people, have signed “living wills” saying that they don’t want to put that kind of physical, mental and economic burden on their families, and that if they no longer recognize their own names, then they want food and water to be withheld, to allow for a “dignified death”, rather than a prolonged, stretched out decay. So far, though, most hospitals and states refuse to accept this kind of living will, and the courts are arguing that the act of swallowing any food or water signals consent to continue being fed.So, we get the situation in the above comic. An empty husk being kept alive by medical staff, with really great-looking teeth.