How does a Living Will work?
Doctors and other healthcare professionals cannot normally give you treatment without your permission or consent. And, if you are incapable of consenting or making decisions (if, in legal terms, you “lack the capacity”), they can treat you according to how they see your “best interests”. But, in these situations, when you have become extremely ill and you are expected to remain seriously incapacitated for some time, and you are unable to tell someone how you want to be treated, the wishes you have expressed in your Living Will will have to be very carefully considered. In 2003, the World Medical Association, at its General Assembly in Helsinki, stated that “A patient’s duly executed advance directive should be honoured unless there are reasonable grounds to suppose that it is not valid because it no longer represents the wishes of the patient or that the patient’s understanding was incomplete at the time the directive was prepared. If the advance directive is contrary to the physician’
