terminal sedation

1. The act of drugging a dying patient into a coma and withholding food and water until they die.
   • 2003, Ian Dowbiggin, A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America, Oxford University Press, page 175:

     [The physician] Timothy Quill objects to the hypocrisy of outlawing physician-assisted suicide while permitting the practice of physicians drugging pain-wracked dying patients into comas and then removing hydration and nutrition so the patients die of starvation and dehydration, in what is called terminal sedation.