However there is one way to ensure that you get the sort of care you would want should you be unable to make medical decisions. That is by making an advance directive. Advance directives Many people have heard of Tony Bland who was crushed in the Hillsborough disaster. He lay in a persistent vegetative state for three years before a Court Order in 1993 allowed treatment to be withdrawn and his suffering to come to a merciful close. The judges said that if he had made an advance directive expressing his future wishes he could have been allowed to die in peace earlier.
Advance directives can take many forms.
A good one describes the sort of treatment you would want for different levels of illness, such as if you have a critical illness, a terminal illness, permanent unconsciousness or dementia. A living will is one type of an advance directive. No, there has been a lot of confusion between the two and some people wrongly see advance directives as purely a way of pursuing death. They have little or nothing to do with active voluntary euthanasia , which is at present illegal, and certainly don't authorise this process. But the voluntary euthanasia societies have been very involved in developing the concept, from a humanitarian interest in the dying process.