Advance medical directives; revises Health Care Decisions Act to clarify process. (HB2396)

The advance directive parts are good, but the parts for forcibly treating a protesting patient remind me of something from "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" or "1984." Really, aren't we better than this? Let's not go back to the 1940's

This part: (ii) aims to increase scientific understanding of any condition that the declarant may have or otherwise to promote human well-being, even though it offers no prospect of direct benefit to the patient.
should not even be in an advanced directive, it's a violaton of the Nuremberg code for an incapacitated person to participate in research without informed consent by THEM, not anyone else.

This bill does not protect terminal patients from experimentationsufficently. It allows for verbal consent to experimentation not intended for the benefit of the patient if the patient is terminal. There is no check to see if the person who is dying has truly consented if there is no signature and no witness required.

There also is not sufficient protection from people signing advanced directives full of boilerplate and not realizing this clause is in their advanced directive. If this bad bill passes it should at the very least require an affirmative check off box that the signer agrees to give this power to their medical power of attorney. This is a dangerous bill for all people who will someday be incapacitated. Which is almost all of us unless we die suddenly.

Sunlight really should put the updated version of this bill up. There have been significant changes

I'm awfully glad that you mentioned that, Art. Richmond Sunlight is totally automated—nobody ever "puts up" anything. So when a new version of a bill is filed, it should appear on Richmond Sunlight within the hour. It turns out that there was a bug in my code that prevented the text of some bills from being updated if more than two versions had been filed. I've gotten that fixed now. Thanks for mentioning it!