ADVANCE MEDICAL DIRECTIVE

AN ADVANCE Medical Directive (AMD) is a living will signed in advance by a person to indicate that he does not wish to be placed on a life-support system to prolong his life if he becomes terminally ill and unconscious.

Intensive care such as mechanical breathing to keep the person from dying will be withheld, but medication and palliative care will be given.

Doctors treating a patient have no way of knowing if he has an AMD. Only after they have exhausted all hope of saving the patient, does the hospital check on whether the patient has an AMD.

EUTHANASIA

EUTHANASIA, or mercy killing, is the deliberate termination of a person's life, based on the belief that the patient would be better off dead.

Doctors carrying out euthanasia generally administer a lethal injection to their patients.

In doctor-assisted suicides, doctors prescribe drug overdoses, which the patients have to take on their own.

Doctor-assisted suicides and euthanasia are legal in only a few countries, like Switzerland, the Netherlands, and also in the state of Oregon in the United States.

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