Word: die
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...woman stopped breathing after taking pills and drinking a large quantity of alcohol. She was revived but suffered severe brain damage. Her breathing was assisted by a respirator. Her prospects for survival were bleak, and her father asked the doctor to disconnect the respirator and allow her to die with dignity...
...courts of Massachusetts saw differently. The following year, in the case of Joseph Saikewicz, a severely mentally retarded patient who was dying of leukemia, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts delegated the courts find authority in the right-to-die decision, and touched off a heated battle between the legal and medical professions...
...dangerous precedent for courts to interfere with doctors' traditional autonomy in such matters. They argued that society has given the medical profession the responsibility of determining the efficacy of treatments and a patient's chances of survival, and thus they must be the ones to make the right-to-die decision...
...court became the first in the nation to uphold the withholding of emergency treatment from irreversibly, terminally-ill in-competent patients who suffer caridac or respiratory failure. The decision held that doctors have the final say on the right-to-die of these patients...
...feel free to treat terminally-ill incompetents without court interference and they are relatively free to define irreversible terminal illness. Yet, a survey of practices in local hospitals reveals that the Saikewicz experience has served its purpose in making hospitals and doctors more careful about the right-to-die decisons...