Assignment Questions - Ethics

Assignment Questions - Ethics

Terms

Euthanasia

The term “euthanasia” is sometimes a need of the patient to end the life of the patient to finish the pain of the disease or illness (Battin 1999). The suffering or pain of the patient is the primary reason of the assisted suicide, but these reasons may not be the only ones.

Case of Karen Quinlan (1975)

Karen Ann Quinlan (March 29th of 1954, Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA - June 11th of 1985, New Jersey, USA) was an American girl who fell into coma following ingestion of alcohol and barbiturates, suffering irreversible brain damage. In April 1975, the young Karen A. Quinlan started a diet strictly to wear a dress that had recently bought to wear at a party. On April 15, having not eaten anything except a few slices of bread in a 48 hour period, she attended a party at a friend's house. During the course of the party, after taking an overdose of alcohol, and Valium (a tranquilizer), Quinlan told her friends that she felt dizzy. She was later found by those who attended the party, unconscious and not breathing. She was rushed to a hospital where she was diagnosed with anoxia prolonged failure of autonomic and respiratory deficiency was placed on a ventilator in the hospital (Bernhoft 1993).

After some months, his parents requested that she must be removed from the respirator that kept her alive, but hospital staff refused. In 1976, Quinlan took their case to the Supreme Court of New Jersey, which authorized the decision to parents. When she was removed from the respirator, Quinlan surprised the world because they continued to breathe unassisted way, feeding the remote possibility of recovery, being fed artificially for nine years.

Her case was used to open a discussion to the question about the moral legitimacy of denial or limitation of certain medical interventions in the current state of technological development, attracting the interest of public opinion towards this issue, and highlighting the need to identify moral criteria that legitimate decisions to limit medical therapies in certain circumstances, as well as, consumption of drugs in a non-medicated.

Case of Nancy Cruzan (1983)

On January 11, 1983, at 24 years old, Nancy Cruzan lost control of her car on an ice track in Missouri. After two weeks of unconscious, she was diagnosed with a persistent vegetative state as a result of the prolonged deprivation of oxygen to her brain underwent irreversible damage. Nancy Cruzan evolved spontaneous breathing, however, because of their status, could not swallow (Asch 2002).

The case of Nancy Cruzan was the first case about the right to die that appeal to the Supreme Court U.S. (1990), since the Quinlan case only appealed to the Court of New Jersey. In July 1988, the Cruzan family won the case in the Court of Succession (Albright & Hazler 1995). However, the lawyer appealed, so the Missouri Supreme Court reversed that decision. This Court concluded that the State has an interest in preserving life unconditionally, and that supporting a patient's ...