Ferchi

"These cases are quite different from those we've known in the past," such as those involving Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan and Terri Schiavo, said Dr. Joseph Fins, director of the medical ethics division at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Hospital. "Those patients could all breathe without a ventilator. They were in a vegetative state, not brain-dead, and that distinction makes all the difference."