Word: cruzans
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...Nancy Cruzan, now 32, has done nothing for the past seven years. She has not hugged her mother or gazed out the window or played with her nieces. She has neither laughed nor wept, her parents say, nor spoken a word. Since her car crashed on an icy night, she has lain so still for so long that her hands have curled into claws; nurses wedge napkins under her fingers to prevent the nails from piercing her wrists. "She would hate being like this," says her mother Joyce. "It took a long time to accept she wasn't getting better...
...Cruzan case dramatically evokes many of the primal emotions and fundamental uncertainties of life, death and love. Even the simple question at the heart of the Cruzan case -- who is to decide on ending a life -- defies an easy answer. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled last year that the state must decide. And in Cruzan's case, the court concluded, the state's interest in preserving life was not offset by any clear or convincing evidence of Nancy Cruzan's own wishes or by any demonstration that the feeding tube was "heroically invasive" or burdensome. "We choose...
...Cruzan's parents believe the decision to end her life, painful as it is, should rest with them, based on their intimate knowledge of Nancy's personality, views and preferences. "My daughter would say, 'Help, get me out of this,' " insists Joe Cruzan. The Cruzans' lawyers argue that the guarantee of liberty in the Constitution's due process clause protects individuals -- including helpless patients -- against unwarranted bodily intrusions by the state, and that a loving family is the best surrogate to decide what medical course an incompetent relative would choose. In 1983 a presidential medical- ethics commission endorsed the principle...
...personality, no family, and that no one who loves her can make decisions about her." But other experts believe that advocates of self-determination often skip over a basic question in incompetent-patient cases. Asks University of Michigan law professor Yale Kamisar: "Whose rights are being fought for, Nancy Cruzan's or her parents? Whose preferences are being advanced...
...issues in the Cruzan case are ultimately both profound and perplexing. "If only the ambulance had arrived five minutes earlier," muses Joe Cruzan, "or five minutes later." But even as he muses, and as the Supreme Court ponders, other ambulances are reaching other patients at that same fateful juncture of too late and too soon...