Word: euthanasias
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...mean the certain death of a patient. Many doctors, after all, are taught to regard death as an enemy and to do all they can to defeat it-or at least to keep it at bay for a while. Many regard "pulling the plug" as an act akin to euthanasia, which is forbidden by both law and the medical code...
...have the courts always acted consistently in other, related cases. Though euthanasia, or deliberate mercy killing, is still regarded as murder, the courts have generally dealt lightly with those accused of it. Juries in such cases have shown a reluctance to convict; even when they do, judges have usually been lenient in their sentencing. In a 1968 case in Illinois, for example, a 69-year-old man admitted to suffocating his crippled wife and then attempting to take his own life. The judge, on his own initiative, withdrew the man's guilty plea, entered a judgment of not guilty...
Even if New Jersey had a rule on brain death, Karen's case would not quite fit because of her slight brain activity and occasional spontaneous breathing. To cut off life support now might therefore fall within the area of euthanasia. In outright cases of euthanasia-"when someone is suffering from a terminal disease and you inject a drug to terminate life," as Dr. Winter puts it -the law demands a verdict of intentional homicide. But on the question of a doctor shutting off a life-supporting machine and permitting a patient to die, the law is largely silent...
...Advocates of euthanasia insist that a terminally ill person should be allowed to choose between prolonging his life and ending it. Pollster Mervin Field reports that a good many Californians, at least, appear to agree. In a recent Field poll of 504 Californians carefully selected to provide a good cross section of the state's population, 87% agreed that incurably ill patients should have the right to refuse medication that might prolong their lives. A significant number of those polled were willing to go even further. When asked if incurably ill patients should have the right...
...reported [Feb. 24], call the Army's blackbird-killing campaign "a form of mass euthanasia," which would imply a good death in the victims' interest...