Timothy Murphy, Phd, A Professor Of Philosophy In Biomedical

This problem first began to surface in the 1980s when the court had to face Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health. In this case the court had to decide by “clear and convincing evidence” that the comatose patient’s (Nancy Beth Cruzan) desire to terminate her life before the courts would allow her family’s wish of disconnecting her feeding tube be carried out. Unfortunately eight of nine judges said no to the proposition and concluded that the right

Autonomy can override beneficence when life-support is withdrawn (Prozgar, 2010). In addition, when a physician takes the position of withdrawing life-supporting equipment, the principle of non-maleficence is severed. Since helping patients die violates the physician’s virtue of duty to save lives,” distributed justice is served by releasing a room in the intensive care unit for a patient who has a higher chance of resolving their medical problems (Pozgar, G. 2010). There are so many inflict fuzzy gray areas and ideas about conflicting DNR policies that political disputes had to go to the courts to sort out the issues legally.

When a patient is unable to make decisions for himself or herself, their caregivers and those who know them are appointed to make the decisions based on what the patient would have wanted. This is called surrogate decision making. According to the article Terri Schiavo and End-of-Life Decisions “when surrogate decision makers and caregivers cannot agree upon what that choice would have been, they may turn to the courts to determine either what the now-incapacitated patient would have chosen or who is best suited to choose as the patient would have” (Mathes, 2005)

At the time of the Court’s ruling, eighteen states and Washington, D.C. had laws that allowed family members to withhold treatment from patients lacking the capacity to make medical decisions. The majority of these statutes required that the patient be terminally ill. As of June 1998, thirteen states require that the proxy have specific authorization and/or specific conditions be met in order to withhold artificial nutrition and hydration.

Merits: The respondent, Daniel Murphy, was convicted by a jury in an Oregon court of the second-degree murder of his wife. The victim died by strangulation in her home in the city of Portland, and abrasions and lacerations were found on her throat. There was no sign of a break-in or robbery. Word of the murder was sent to the estranged husband, Daniel Murphy. Upon receiving the message, Murphy promptly telephoned the Portland police and voluntarily came into Portland for questioning. Shortly after the respondent’s arrival at the station house, where he was met by retained counsel, the

Who dictates how you live your life? How does one define life and when that life should end? If you become terminally ill, would you like the choice to choose how your life ends? In the United States, assisted suicide, is a highly-debated issue. On one side, there are many in support of allowing a person the right to end their life with dignity at the time of their choosing. While others believe, it is a moral right to sustain life and leave a person’s exit from this world to a higher power. The two opposing viewpoints have both compassionate reasons and disadvantages; nevertheless, a person’s human rights as an individual are the most important aspect to uphold.

This decision has affected people’s behavior as individuals and public institutions such as family, young, elderly, disabled, LGTB and those with pre-existing conditions. For example, Kates & Ranji (2014) report that health care access and coverage for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGTB) community in the U.S. face opportunities and challenges when getting access to care. The authors report that LGBT individuals experience some discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, due to ongoing discrimination, access to health care have been limited to these people (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2014). LGBT individuals not only face discrimination when trying to receive care, but also face difficulties that limit them such as “barriers in obtaining insurance coverage, gaps in coverage, cost-related hurdles, and poor treatment by health care providers” (Kates & Ranji, 2014).

The Superior Court of Los Angeles County became a pivotal case in a patient’s right to refuse treatment. In the initial case Ms. Bouvia and her legal team sought a court order to have the NGT removed and to stop all medical treatments she did not consent to. She argued that this treatment would not be a cure for her condition and would not improve her quality of life. The hospital staff argued the interest of the state prevailed over a patient’s right to refuse treatment. They noted that the state and healthcare teams viable interests include: “(1) preserving life, (2) preventing suicide, (3) protecting innocent third parties, and (4) maintaining the ethical standards of the medical profession, including supporting the right of physicians to effectively render necessary and appropriate medical services” (Liang & Lin, 2005). Additionally they sighted Ms. Bouvia’s failed previous attempt to “starve herself to death” in 1983 with the assistance of her medical team. The court denied her request citing these key interests and the fact that medical professionals felt that Ms. Bouvia could live 15-20 additional years with supplemental nutrition justified the state’s interest in preserving her life. The court also stated that any other decision would be condoning a medical team to aid and abet suicide.

The state of Missouri’s Right to Life Policy affirms the legal action of permitting people to die with “clear and convincing” evidence supporting the patient’s desire to end his/her life in a situation of chronic illness or incompetence. The controversial topic of refusing treatment and/or assisting in suicide reached the Supreme Court of the United States for the first time on December 6, 1989. Lower court decisions and appeals contributed to the events of the Cruzan V. Missouri case leading up to the highest court of the United States of America.

This film explains the legal role of advance directives in end of life issues. An advance directive is “a written document directing how medical decisions are to be made in the future when the patient lacks decisional capacity and is unable to decide and choose” (Hanlon, End of Life Issues, Slide 28, Bullet 1). All three of the cases demonstrate the importance in filling out some form of directive. When there is nothing to go off of, it makes decisions extremely tough for families and medical providers. Having legal documentation of patient wishes helps understand what treatments they would or would not consent to. In cases like

A retired social worker, Smith, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 86. He said that he has no regrets but worries about the pain. "Death itself is not a fearful consideration for me," he said. "But the process of dying could be if it were extremely uncomfortable." He is in no haste to die but expects that he will feel severe pain when the cancer reaches its final phases and when it happens; he would want his doctor to be able to prescribe him with a toxic dose of medication that he can use to end his life

Access to emergency contraception has been a heavily debated issue because there has to be a balance between protecting health care provider’s religious and moral beliefs on one hand, and providing a uniform standard of care and maintaining patient rights on the other. This principle gives an important approach to the analysis of ethical questions arising from the general obligation to preserve human life and the limits of that obligation. Among other questions, the principle addresses whether the forgoing of life-sustaining treatment constitutes a physician-assisted suicide in certain circumstances and it guides individuals and surrogate decision-makers in the weighing of benefits and burdens.

This is illustrated in Mrs. Smith’s case. Mrs. Smith is an 85 year old who has suffered from a large stroke that extends to both of her brain hemispheres which has left her unconscious and unable to make medical decisions for herself. She only has some brain stem reflexes and requires a ventilator for life support. Mrs. Smith did not set up an advanced directive, which is defined by Miracle (2011) “mechanism by which individuals make known how they want medical treatment decisions made when they can no longer make them for themselves” (p.229). Without an advanced directive, medical decisions will fall to Mrs. Smith’s children, Sara and Frank. Each of which have different views regarding their mother’s plan of care. The decision that needs to be made is whether to prolong Mrs. Smith’s life with continued medical intervention, as Sara would like to do, or stop all treatments and care, as Frank

As I read on, I realized the point of Mr. Mutchnick’s strange blog post. To briefly summarize, he relentlessly attempts to gain the reader’s sympathy as he explains the travails of being a gay man who desires to have a child and their attempt to find a surrogate mother. However, the blog is riddled with obvious fallacies, which include broad-sweeping

Today, voluntary euthanasia is getting closer to being legalized in more than just one state in the United States. “‘Voluntary’ euthanasia means that the act of putting the person to death is the end result of the person’s own free will” (Bender 19). “ Voluntary euthanasia is an area worthy of our serious consideration, since it would allow patients who have exhausted all other reasonable options to choose death rather than continue suffering” (Bender 19). The question of whether or not voluntary euthanasia should be legalized is a major debate that has been around for years. Because the issue of whether people should have the right to choose how they want to live or die is so complex. With the advances in technology today we have made