We know how to end life's.
They'll get Michael Gove right on that!
I was once helping take down a 10-foot weather balloon full of helium, and took in two breaths in a row of pure helium. I started to get tunnel vision, said "whoah", sat down when I realized I was about to lose consciousness, fell down, and twitched just long enough for my friend to realize I wasn't joking around before I woke up. From my experience, hypoxia from pure helium is slightly pleasant all the way to loss of consciousness. I presume pure nitrogen would be nearly the same.
Let my last words be something witty in a high-pitched helium voice.
(Side note: pure nitrogen hypoxia would not be a particularly humane form of execution because the condemned would likely fight it by holding on to their last breath.)
I fully understand why this has been done, to stop people who only intermittently get the urge, but for someone like me it's a major bloody inconvenience, so inert gas it most likely is.
(The above is not an opener for a discussion, it's an FYI for a different perspective. Please don't respond).
Like a warning sign or some fan kicking in later?
I'm wondering if it only anticipated pacemakers being disabled for malice or out of negligence.
[0] We did end up following the hospice's recommendations not to administer IV fluids, for what it's worth.
[1] https://spcare.bmj.com/content/bmjspcare/11/1/68.full.pdf
I know people that work in hospice, and they say this is a big misconception (the article hints at it too). they patients don't die from lack of water, they don't want water because they are dying, and their body can't process it. In fact, as you kind of touched on at the start, giving them IV fluids can cause them to drown since their body can't process the water.
Death is pretty ugly thing, that comes for us all. I got to learn the fun way that in the state of Oregon, it is illegal to disable a pacemaker. Even when the person has a DNR, and it is really the only thing keeping them alive. The best the doctors can do is turn the pacemaker down as low as possible, and hope its not enough to keep the person artificially alive. Which seems kind of really weird, when its also the first and one of the only states that allows medically assisted suicide..