Painless?

If dying without food and water is so painless - and can anyone in their right mind really believe that?! - why do they have to give Terry Schiavo morphine for the pain?

Dr. David Stevens, executive director of the Christian Medical Association in Bristol, Tenn., has worked in some of Africa's poorest nations.

He recalls watching people die of dehydration with symptoms that include thick saliva, severe cramps and dry heaving. As their mucous membranes and intestines dry out, they bleed from the mouth and nose, and begin to hallucinate.

Stevens says the quiet death that physicians often associate with dehydration comes to patients whose bodies were already shutting down from cancer or another terminal illness. "That's a whole different thing than someone like this, whose body is in metabolic equilibrium," he said.

--from news article "Schiavo's Hydration Level Raises Questions"