In the recent Bollywood release Piku, 70-year-old Bhaskar Banerjee played by Amitabh Bachchan expresses shock that Rana (Irrfan Khan) allowed his cancer-stricken father to be put on a ventilator. I don’t like unnatural deaths so don’t ever do that to me, Bhaskar tells daughter Piku (Deepika Padukone).  The scene has provoked much chatter on social media. There seems to be a general horror of dying hooked to machines, especially a ventilator. And yet, Aruna Shanbaug, who was in a vegetative state for 42 years, was put on a ventilator in her last days. Senior critical care specialist Dr RK Mani calls it the “ultimate outrage”. “Why did we heap such suffering on her and not let her die in peace? We have not questioned the ethics and rationality of artificial life support when treatment is futile. In the US, the first Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order was written in 1973 and by 1988, it had been codified as law. And they did not call it ‘euthanasia’. We might have closed the gap in curative treatment, but we are 40 years behind the developed world in end of life care (EOLC),” says Mani. 

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