Agonal breathing, in which the sufferer can’t get enough breath because of a failing heart, may last only for a few seconds, but it can go on for forty minutes or more and be extremely distressing to both victim and loved ones at the bedside. It can be stopped with a neuromuscular blocking agent, but many doctors won’t administer it, because it inevitably hastens death and is therefore thought unethical or even possibly illegal, even though death is just around the corner anyway.
