It's a trivial legal question. The answer is that you resuscitate right now, without any hesitation.<p>You don't want to explain to the judge that you let someone die because of a stupid tatoo, that may very well come from 10 years ago.
The majority of suicide attempts are driven by temporary situations. Postponing a suicide attempt usually means the person will reconsider. <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0805923" rel="nofollow">http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0805923</a> Are there any such studies on people reconsidering their DNR?
<p><pre><code> “Paper gets lost, and some people do not trust paper. This
man may have been trying to safeguard against that
</code></pre>
He was wise to distrust, as it turns out, given that they decided to temporarily ignore the tattoo despite the fact there was a valid form on file for him.
I wish that these tattoos carried as much weight as a paper DNR. People that prefer DNR currently have no way to express their wishes when outside of a health care facility.
There are probably some people who go with the DNR route because the healthcare system isn't that great in the US. They might prefer being 6 feet under over being crushed by debt.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_debt" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_debt</a><p>> <i>70 million Americans either have difficulty paying for medical treatment or have medical debt.</i>
I think I might get a similar tattoo, but with a URL, QR code, and a chip. The url and QR code will point to a github repo with my DNR. Which I will sign with a "No really, I mean it" statement that is cryptographically signed, maybe once a day, once a week, something like that. The chip will also have the key to authenticate the git signatures. And, in the DNR, I will have directions to contact my pre-paid attorney, with further direction to summon them to the ICU and make sure my wishes are carried out.