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Life and Death Choices after Cruzan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Larry Gostin
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Extract

This issue of Law, Medicine & Health Care on life or death choices, so skillfully put together by Alexander Capron and based on ASLM's conference last September chaired by Professor Capron and Joanne Lynn, grew out of the Supreme Court's decision in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health.

At the time of the Supreme Court decision Nancy Cruzan was in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), a condition in which a person exhibits motor-reflexes but evinces no indications of significant cognitive function. Nancy Cruzan's biological existence was being sustained by the provision of technological feeding and hydration. Hospital employees refused, without court approval, to honor her parents’ request to withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 19 , Issue 1-2 , Spring Summer 1991 , pp. 9 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1991

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References

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