Eluana Englaro has died. From the story:
Eluana Englaro, the 38-year-old comatose woman at the center of an Italian right-to-die case, died Monday night despite efforts by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to order doctors to feed her, the clinic said.This was too fast to have been caused by dehydration. Perhaps her body just gave out.
She had been in a coma since a 1992 car crash. A moment of silence was observed in the Senate, which was debating a law that would have forced the clinic in northern Italy where she was hospitalized to resume feeding her through a tube after nutrition was stopped at the request of the family.
I hope the Italian government looks into this issue in depth and with sobriety. Removing sustenance based on a patient’s quality of life is too important to be left to rushed legislation pushed forward in a sensationalist media milieu. But I do think that food and fluids needs to be looked at differently than other forms of care—for reasons I laid out in the wake of Terri Schiavo’s death. The law should reflect that.
RIP.
