Since Terri Schiavo died on March 31, interest in living wills remains in the United States.

An excerpt:

The results of Ms. Schiavo's autopsy, released on Wednesday, underscored the need to make one's wishes known, said Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. He noted that politicians had been eager to intervene in her case even though it was now evident that her brain was irredeemably damaged.

"The movement to say, 'You've got to have Tom DeLay act as a third-party surrogate witness before you can have medical treatment stopped' seemed to be irrefutably silenced by the autopsy report," Dr. Caplan said.

Since March, Aging With Dignity, a nonprofit group in Florida devoted to supporting end-of-life wishes, has received requests for more than 800,000 copies of its do-it-yourself form, known as Five Wishes, which blends the statement of wishes and the appointment of a medical proxy, a relative or friend with the power to make life-or-death decisions.

That is a 60 times the normal number of requests, said the group's president, Paul Malley. "Mail is coming to us by the truckloads," he said.

Christina Lesco of Long Beach, N.Y., said that as she watched the television coverage of the final days of Ms. Schiavo - the brain-injured Florida woman who spent 15 years unable to express her wishes about treatment or end-of-life care - she felt sadness for the family and determination that the same thing should never happen to her own family.

So Ms. Lesco, a 45-year-old jewelry executive, went to see her lawyer and filled out the forms she needed to describe her wishes and to name her brother as her representative for making tough medical decisions if she is incapacitated.

"They explain in detail what all the words mean," she said. "Some of the words are scary for you. It's a scary thing to go through, to write about. But you have to do it."