Breaking: CDF releases clarification (confirmation) re: nutrition & hydration

Via Amy, the CDF responds to a request from the USCCB today:

First question: Is the administration of food and water (whether by natural or artificial means) to a patient in a "vegetative state" morally obligatory except when they cannot be assimilated by the patient’s body or cannot be administered to the patient without causing significant physical discomfort?

Response: Yes. The administration of food and water even by artificial means is, in principle, an ordinary and proportionate means of preserving life. It is therefore obligatory to the extent to which, and for as long as, it is shown to accomplish its proper finality, which is the hydration and nourishment of the patient. In this way suffering and death by starvation and dehydration are prevented.

Second question: When nutrition and hydration are being supplied by artificial means to a patient in a "permanent vegetative state", may they be discontinued when competent physicians judge with moral certainty that the patient will never recover consciousness?

Response: No. A patient in a "permanent vegetative state" is a person with fundamental human dignity and must, therefore, receive ordinary and proportionate care which includes, in principle, the administration of water and food even by artificial means.

Also published, a lengthy commentary by CDF on the history of the teaching that artificial nutrition and hydration is ordinary and proportionate means. More backstory when I get a chance.

Update: This is the first time Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict, has gotten involved in this particular question (as far as I know). CDF hereby has confirmed Pope John Paul II's teaching given in 2004 that artificial hydration and nutrition is, in principle, ordinary care and as such always to be administered. The CDF commentary specifically states, "the Responses now given by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith continue the direction of the documents of the Holy See cited above, and in particular the Address of John Paul II of March 20, 2004."

I'm guessing, but don't know for sure, that President Skylstad submitted this question to CDF because many Catholic hospitals are still ignoring the directive of Pope John Paul II.

Well, now they're ignoring the recent teaching of two popes.

Update 2: Reuters coverage.