…the elderly patients…are comatose. They weigh practically nothing. Their skin hangs in heavy folds on their skeletons. ‘These patients must be fed through gastric tubes pushed down their throats,’ Dr. Peter Haemmerli explains, and that can make even comatose patients retch and vomit.’ Thus, according to Barbara J. Culliton, many severely ill patients must endure much pain. Is it right to keep them living in this pain? Wouldn’t it be more humane to give them a painless release from their agony? For this irreversibly comatose pat ....