Richard Rudd BBC Documentary - Too Negative on Advance Directives

Richard Rudd was in a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed and comatose on a life support machine.  His family recalled a conversation where Richard told them he wouldn't want to be trapped in a useless body.  So they agreed that it was time to let him go. (Telegraph)  The family was convinced there was "no way in a million years" that Richard would want to live with his injuries.  

Yet even as the Rudd family mentally prepared to say goodbye, his doctor discovered that Richard was still able to blink his eyes in response to simple questions. (He was in a locked-in state, not PVS.)  When asked if he wanted to stay alive, the father of two's answer was a categoric "Yes."  Doctors waited to confirm the diagnosis, and they were apparently right to do so.  

But somewhat disturbing is the twist that some large media are putting on the case, featured in the BBC documentary, Between Life and Death.  The Daily Mail, for example, quotes Richard's father:  "'Making a living will could be detrimental to your own health. Imagine if you changed your mind but couldn't communicate it."  It quotes Dr Andrew Fergusson: 'This case shows the weakness of giving legal force to documents which, by their very nature, can never cover every possibility. People often change their minds when the going gets rough. They suddenly discover there are things worth living for.”  

Advance care planning, like organ donation, has difficulty getting sufficient currency in the UK.  It will be even more difficult as a result of vivid suggestions that advance refusals of life-sustaining treatment are ill-advised because future prognoses can never be certain.  Of course, they can almost never be 100% certain.  We never demand such a level of evidence in medicine or law.  (Check out PalliMed's "Why Paul the Prognosticating Octopus Pesters Me")  Moreover, if we really operated on such a level of certainty, we would be causing a great deal of suffering.