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Dying Patients: Who's in Control?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

James F. Childress
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Extract

The President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research undertook a study of “Deciding to Forego Life-Sustaining Treatment” because this issue seemed to the commissioners “to involve some of the most important and troubling ethical and legal questions in modern medicine,” even though it was not part of the commission's original legislative mandate. In submitting the report to the President, Morris Abrams, the chairman of the commission, noted: “Although our study has done nothing to decrease our estimation of the importance of this subject to physicians, patients, and their families, we have concluded that the cases that involve true ethical difficulties are many fewer than commonly believed and that the perception of difficulties occurs primarily because of misunderstandings of the dictates of law and ethics.”

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , Fall 1989 , pp. 227 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1989

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References

President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Deciding to Forego Life-Sustaining Treatment (Washington, D.C.:U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1983). Emphasis added.Google Scholar
Eisendrath, Stuart J. Jonsen, Albert R., “The Living Will: Help or Hindrance?” Journal of the American Medical Association, 1983, 249 (15):204–2058.Google Scholar
See Emanuel, Linda L., “Does the DNR Order Need Life-Sustaining Intervention? Time for Comprehensive Advance Directives,” American Journal of Medicine, 1989, 86:87–90.Google Scholar
For a good discussion, see Cantor, Norman L., Legal Frontiers of Death and Dying (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
See Schoene-Seifert, Bettina Childress, James F., “How Much Should the Cancer Patient Know and Decide?” CA-A Cancer Journal, 1986, 36: 85–84.Google Scholar
See Areen, Judith, “The Legal Status of Consent Obtained from Families of Adult Patients to Withhold or Withdraw Treatment,” Journal of the American Medical Association 1987, 258: 229–234.Google Scholar
“It's Over Debbie,” Journal of the American Medical Association 1988, 259: 272.Google Scholar
See Beauchamp, Tom L. Childress, James F., Principles of Biomedical Ethics (third ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.)Google Scholar
Lynn, Joanne Childress, James F., “Must patients Always Be Given Food and Water?” Hastings Center Report 1983, 13: 17–21.Google Scholar