Modern medicine has allowed for the creation of an ever-growing mass of hypermedically-assisted golems (Frankenschiavos?), people who in an earlier era would have expired and allowed the grief cycle in the living to play itself out in a natural manner. The capabilities of medicine are immense, but are still limited:
"The ancient teachers of this science," said he, "promised impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and show how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens: they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows."
(excerpt from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus)
With Schiavo and others like her, this passage from diminished life to death has been interrupted. With more advances in medicine, this and other modern societies will continue to see more Schiavo-like cases, as the ability of medicine to provide hyperprosthetically enhanced existences will only "improve", pending the ability and decisions of insurers or the taxpayers (or those that govern them) to support these modes of "living".
What was perceived as death state in near antiquity may now be called by some as "life". This line appears to be shifting even by the day as new findings are released. Combined with the law and the ability of judges to interpret law and and executive to enforce those judgements and law is the issue, counterbalanced by the right of the individual or family (or now families), to decide.
Does the rest of the world have the same quarrelsome moments when dealing with life and death. Some cultures are seemingly more accepting of an organic passage from life to death than America. But Americans would somehow consider that barbaric and cruel.
Not sure what the answer is but it looks like a decision is being made for us even now.
May the dear doctor of Ingolstadt watch over us.