Word: patiently
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rarities. Four out of five people now die in a hospital or nursing home (only half did 35 years ago), and "most don't die unexpectedly," says University of Wisconsin Pediatrician Norman Post. "They die as a result of a very conscious decision by doctors, along with the patient's family, to withhold treatment." The question becomes not how to save a life but when to let it go. Aided by artificial and transplanted organs and a jungle gym of gadgetry, doctors can now stave off death for long periods. The blessings of science have brought the curse...
...Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research offered its recommendations on these questions in a 255-page report, "Deciding to Forgo Life-Sustaining Treatment." The study, the seventh published by the prestigious panel of doctors, lawyers, theologians and others since it started work three years ago, concludes that a competent patient, one who is able to understand treatment choices and their consequences, has the all-but-absolute right to decide his own fate. Declares Dr. Joanne Lynn, a geriatrician and principal author of the report: "An adult person of sound mind has authority over his own body." When a person...
Current laws also provide that a rational patient can make his own healthcare decisions in most cases. "A competent adult has the right to refuse medical treatment even if the ultimate result is death," writes Milwaukee Attorney Robyn Shapiro in the Harvard Journal on Legislation. "This right is grounded in the doctrine of informed consent and in the constitutional right to privacy." But as the case of Peter Cinque demonstrates, medical institutions do not always automatically honor a patient's wishes, often for fear of a malpractice suit by surviving relatives or a belief that the patient does...
...more complicated matter when the patient is mentally ill, retarded, senile, brain damaged or comatose. Technically, he has the same rights as a competent patient. In practice, someone else must try to replicate the decision the patient would make were he able to speak for himself. This notion of "substituted judgment" was established judicially for an incompetent patient by the New Jersey Supreme Court in the 1976 landmark case of Karen Ann Quinlan, who had lapsed into an irreversible coma the year before. Pressed by her parents, the court ruled that her respirator could be removed if the Quinlans...
...What are you doing? God's will is that this woman is ready to go. You're the one holding her back.' " Whittemore sought and received court permission to stop the feeding. "There is a point," wrote Superior Court Judge Reginald Stanton, "at which a patient, or someone acting for him if he is incompetent, has the right to refuse treatment. That point is reached when intellectual functioning is permanently reduced to a very primitive level or when pain has become unbearable and unrelievable." Conroy died in February, though her tube was never removed because an appeal...