I find the theory that one can legally kill someone who is disabled slowly by enforced dehydration and starvation but not by a quick lethal injection or blow to the head. The old active vs. passive or action vs. inaction distinction should have died a century ago when liberal justice Holmes demolished it in his famous “may rest upon his oars, though it is a reprhach to the law that it is so” opinion.

If I’m definitely dead–and both Scripture and science agree that, in Scriptural language “In that hour [of death]their thoughts perish” and “The dead known not any thing”–please donate my organs and body.

I don’t know whether this patient, or Mrs. Schiavo, et al., were really brain dead and in a PVS or not. Ah, htere’s the rub! But, “In favor of life . . .” every presumption is indulged,” per Blackstone. Why not use the “beyond reasonable doubt” test?

Upon seeing an MRI on me, two top experts told my wife and me that I had lost much of my higherbrain functin, could never return to gainful much less professional work, and started talking living wills, nursing homes, etc. Then they realized that this was congenital and I had just tested in the 97th percentile in verbal abilities.

Later, after I uncovered some shocking evidence that displeased some powerful people, I was told that I was suffering dementia, Alzheimers’, etc., and actually committed for 90 days and suspended from law practice for mental defect. The records and evidence will prove gross medical malpractice, fraud upon my expert and the court, denial of effective assistance of counsel, direct conflicts of counsel created by those seeking this, etc., whether anyoe wants to bleieve me or not.

I have known two people, both quite sentient when I knew them, whose parents had been told by doctors that they were brain dead–one’s death certificate was actually signed and issued twice–and pressured by hospitals to “pull the plug” and withdraw life support including hydration and food, but refused to do so.

I used to have a statement from a nurse who related having been compelled to participate in a plug-pulling while the patient, although terminally ill with emphysema, was actually conscious and pleading that they not do this after having been brought out of a coma to have him sign a will to the hospital. The nurse had made an error in another case and was afraid to testify about this when that will was probated.

I am convinced that one client, whose doctor had just said she had four months to live, was given a lethal dose of sedative at her request very shortly after a terrible family fight in her hospital room, and died, but her daughter, my prime client in the situation, does not want to face this.

It was at a State Bar of Texas sponsored continuing education program on Mental Health Law, a field in which I represented and knew a lot of incestuously molested, and suicidal, children, teenagers, and adults, that a prominent local lawyer, son of a former judge, announced that he did not believe in suicide prevention but instead believed in euthanasia, and “forced euthanasia” of all “mental patients.” Does this remind anybody but me of a certain regime against which we won a war?

Anyone who really does not want life support should at least have to sign an Advanced Directive to that effect, with witnesses, etc.

With the death of my designee, the only one of the above-mentioned people who survived pressures to “pull the plug,” I don’t know any eligible person to designate to replace her in a Power of Attorney for Health Care.