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Death and Dying
Death is the end of life. Dying is the process of approaching death, including the choices and actions involved in that process.
Death has always been a central concern of the law. The many legal issues related to death include laws that determine whether a death has actually occurred, as well as when and how it occurred, and whether or not another individual will be chargeable for having caused it. Increasingly, the law has had to deal with complex issues regarding the termination of medical carehahaha8212;such as when an artificial respirator or a feeding tube is withdrawn from a comatose person, or when chemotherapy is withheld from a terminally ill cancer patient. With the development of increasingly complex and powerful medical procedures and devices in the middle and late twentieth century, the U.S. legal system has established rules and standards for the removal of life-sustaining medical care. These laws and judicial decisions have established, for example, the right of individuals to refuse medical treatmenthahaha8212;sometimes called the right to diehahaha8212;as well as the boundaries of that right, particularly as regards the state's interest in protecting life and the medical profession's right to protect its standards. The issues involved in death and dying have often pitted patients' rights groups against physicians' professional organizations as each vies for control over the decision of how and when people die.
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