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PubMedDate not supplied

Natural law and the "right to die".

Over the last two decades social concerns with the "right to die" have grown beyond the ability of our governmental and judicial institutions to consistently deal with them. One reason for this difficulty has been the unavailability of any legal or judicial standard that is consistent with American conceptions of liberty, morality, and justice. This article attempts to examine the theory of natural law to determine whether it may provide a consistent standard for resolving these difficult questions. As natural law theories are traced through history, they lead directly to the United States where a uniquely American interpretation became one of the foundational principles for our constitution. By applying these theories to the contemporary question of the "right to die," natural law can again provide the foundational principles needed to develop standards for dealing with such questions that are consistent with our historical, philosophical, and political traditions.

Civil Rights↗
PubMed1997

End-of-life decision-making: community and medical practitioners' perspectives.

OBJECTIVE: To examine current attitudes and knowledge of the community and medical practitioners in Queensland to end-of-life decisions. DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey by postal questionnaire. PARTICIPANTS: 387 general practitioners and medical specialists and 910 community members from the Queensland electoral roll. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Responses to five questions about end-of-life decision-making, and to legislative changes relating to such decisions. RESULTS: The overall response rate for medical practitioners was 67% and for community members was 53%. 78% of community members (age adjusted) and 54% of doctors thought that a doctor should comply with a patient's request to turn off a life-support system; 68% of doctors through people would still ask to have their life ended even if pain were controlled, compared with 54% of community members; 70% of community members thought the law should be changed to allow active voluntary euthanasia, compared with 33% of doctors; and 65% of community members thought that a doctor should be allowed by law to assist a terminally ill person to die, but only 36% of doctors agreed. 79% of doctors and 75% of community members agreed that people would still ask for assistance to end their lives even if optimal palliative care were freely available. CONCLUSION: Community members supported greater choice and control over end-of-life decisions, while doctors were less supportive of some of the options canvassed. In a climate of community participation in health care decisions, it is important to better understand the basis and meaning of these different views. Further detailed research is recommended.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Palliative treatments of last resort: choosing the least harmful alternative. University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics Assisted Suicide Consensus Panel.

Comprehensive palliative care, as exemplified by many state-of-the-art hospice programs, is the standard of care for the dying. Although palliative care is very effective, physicians, nurses, patients, families, and loved ones regularly face clinically, ethically, legally, and morally challenging decisions throughout the dying process. This is especially true when terminally ill patients are ready to die in the face of complex, difficult-to-treat suffering and request assistance from their health care providers. Although physician-assisted suicide has received the most attention as a potential last-resort response, this practice remains illegal in the United States except in Oregon, and even there it is relatively infrequent. More commonly, decisions are made about accelerating opioid therapy for pain, foregoing life-sustaining therapy, voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, and administering terminal sedation in response to unacceptable suffering. The moral distinctions between these practices are critical to some but relatively inconsequential to others. This paper illustrates, through summaries of real clinical cases, how each of these practices might be used in response to patients in particular clinical circumstances, keeping in focus the patient's values as well as those of families, other loved ones, and health care providers. The challenge is to find the least harmful solution to the patient's problem without abandoning patients and their loved ones to unacceptable suffering or to acting in a more deleterious way on their own.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Death, dying, and the zealous phase.

During the past decade an unprecedented public and professional interest has developed around issues involving death and dying. Persons of differing backgrounds and with different objectives are rushing onto this scene in rapidly increasing numbers. Some of these persons have little understanding of the medical complexities of dying and no clinical experience with dying patients. In this essay I attempt to identify a number of ways in which well-intentioned persons engage dying patients or influence public opinion on death and dying, ways that might prove less than salutary for all concerned.

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

To die in Wa.

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Advance Directives↗