Abstract
The realities of "natural" death and the alternative of a least worst death are explored in this article about the dilemmas faced by terminally ill patients and their doctors. Treatment refusal, the only legally sanctioned means of avoiding medically-prolonged death, may lead to distressing physical conditions that destroy patients' hopes for a dignified death. By functioning as strategists of natural death, however, physicians could help patients selectively refuse treatments in a way that would produce a more comfortable, predictable, and peaceful death. (KIE abstract)
