Woman in a coma for 16 years kept alive by Italian government despite court order

[Honey]

Eluana Englaro, 35, has been in a coma since a car crash in 1992. Her father has been campaigning for the last nine years to have the machine keeping her alive turned off.
Two months ago a court ruled that the feeding and breathing system should be switched off, sparking a furious controversy with many saying it was euthanasia through the back door.
Miss Englaro is in a clinic in Lecco, near Milan, in Italy's northern Lombardy region, and Carlo Lucchina, head of the health authority, said doctors would contravene "professional duties and obligations" if they were to switch off the system.
Mr Lucchina added that the national health system had an obligation to provide patients with "food, water and care", even in hospices responsible for those who are terminally ill.
Cardinal Javier Lorzano Barragan head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Pastoral Health, welcomed the decision and said: "I am in absolute agreement with the Lombardy health authority.
"Food and water are not a therapy but what a person needs to live and suspending it for a person already suffering would mean them dying of thirst and hunger."

Miss Englaro's father Beppe said in his appeal to the court in July that he wanted his daughter to be free from a "inhumane and degrading condition in which she is forced to exist".
As part of his case he said that his daughter had always insisted that if something should ever happen to her she did not want to be kept alive artificially.
He had also expressed concern about what will happen to her when he himself dies and the Milan Court of Appeal found in his favour.
The case followed a decision by Italy's supreme court last year which said a person's right to decide his or her own medical treatment should be respected even if this would cause death.
The Englaro case has often been compared to that of American Terry Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged Florida woman whose case sparked a worldwide debate.
Mrs Schiavo died in March, 2006, after her feeding tube was removed at court orders and over the objections of her parents.
In response to the health authority's letter, Mr Englaro said: "There is a ruling by the court and it needs to be followed. I will carry on to the end because this is the road I have chosen.
"It is a legal question and I am consulting with lawyers to see how we can overcome it."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...oma-alive.html

[Butterfly]

If you can't live on your own than you are dead. It is just artificial life that is forced on you by religious nuts.

[McJag]

This is so sick-she has no life. She is already gone. Who wants to be kept alive for nothing!