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Damage Remedies and Institutional Reform: The Right to Refuse Treatment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2021

Barry R. Furrow
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Extract

The articulation by a court of a new constitutional norm serves a valuable function: the right, as elaborated by judicial opinion, provides a standard for critically evaluating current social practices. The “right to refuse treatment,” that “newly created constitutional right of personal autonomy,” draws attention to the problems of institutionalized mental patients and their desires to make their own decisions to accept or reject drug therapies, particularly where severe side effects are involved. The enunciation of the right to refuse treatment, with its hard-edged overtones, forces us to look at the tension created by the conflict between institutional attempts to treat these patients, the sometimes antithetical desire of those within the institution to control them without regard for treatment impact, and the patient's desire to retain whatever control is left to him in such settings.

The right to refuse treatment-like its common law analogue in tort, informed consent doctrine-draws its roots from concepts of personal autonomy that pervade both tort doctrine and constitutional law.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 10 , Issue 5 , September 1982 , pp. 152 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics

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