I've noticed the same sort of comments coming from several places. Among commentators who are older and who would not want the plug pulled on them, the general attitude seems to be that anyone who would want the plug pulled on themselves is just saying so because they're young and dread being old. Then there seems to be the tacit implication that young people don't really have the right to this attitude because when they're older, they'll see that being alive when you're older, even if you don't have all the physical abilities you had when you were young, is still pretty good.
Now I'm not going to get into the older/younger thing because anyone who has been reading this for a while already knows how I feel about age and death etc.
I just want to point out that these commentators are being remiss by being so dismissive of younger people's attitudes based solely on their youth. Even if every single young person in the world will change their attitude as they age, it is still important for everyone to think this through and make their wishes clear in case something happens while they are still young!
Terri Schiavo was only 27 when she went into her vegetative state, so what mattered was her feelings on the matter at the age of 27, not how she would have felt at the age of 60 or 80.
Making a living will and telling people your wishes is not eternally binding. If your feelings on the matter change as you get older, you can change your living will and notify your nearest and dearest of the changes. But it is totally inappropriate to trivialize someone's wishes because they are only 20, telling them they'll feel differently when they're older, only to have them meet with disaster days before their 21st birthday.
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