According to the Experts

1. "By withdrawing life supports, the doctor is only respecting the patient's wishes regarding medical treatment, not intending the death of the patient. That the patient may be refusing treatment because he wants to die is irrelevant—the right itself is a safeguard to prevent doctors from abusing their power, not an acceptance that hastening death is ever appropriate." -- James D. Torr (Greenhaven Press - Opposing Viewpoints)
2. “Above all, I must not play at God”  -- Hippocratic Oath
   
3. “Persons with mental illness or Alzheimer's disease, deformed infants, and retarded or dying children would thus be denied our new humane "aid-in-dying." But not to worry. The lawyers, encouraged by the cost-containers, will sue to rectify this inequity. Why, they will argue, should the comatose or the demented be denied a right to assisted suicide just because they cannot claim it for themselves? With court-appointed proxy consenters, we will quickly erase the distinction between the right to choose one's own death and the right to request someone else's.”  -- Tamara L. Roleff (Greenhaven Press - Opposing Viewpoints)
   
4. “The common law definition of  ‘death’ was legislatively expanded to include ‘whole brain death’ (beginning with Kansas legislation in 1970)”  -- Clarke D. Forsythe (PROTECTING UNCONSCIOUS,  MEDICALLY-DEPENDENT PERSONS AFTER WENDLAND & SCHIAVO - Ebsco)
5. “Physicians have a duty to provide adequate medication to relieve pain, yet high doses of pain relievers such as morphine can be lethal. The doctrine of double effect, a respected principle of medical ethics, holds that a doctor may prescribe high doses of morphine in order to relieve pain. If the dose also results in the death of the patient (the double effect), the doctor's act is considered ethical as long as his intent was only to relieve pain. For similar reasons, intending to remove unduly burdensome treatment is acceptable even if, as a secondary effect, it ends up causing death”  -- James D. Torr (Greenhaven Press - Opposing Viewpoints)
   
6. Physicians who prescribe medication “often or in large amounts for particular patients” are at risk of being prosecuted by the Drug Enforcement Agency.  -- Jane E. Brody (Terminal Options for the Irreversibly Ill - NY Times
7.  “Patients can refuse unwanted treatment if they are mentally competent, or a health care agent can make the request for them if the patients had previously completed a living will and health care proxy” --  Jane E. Brody (Terminal Options for the Irreversibly Ill - NY Times