Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Lewis A. Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Patient Advocacy ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
Fda Approval ◽  
Investigational Drugs ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Us ◽  
Patient Advocacy Group ◽  
The Right

In addition to setting out the themes of the book, the Introduction tells the story of cancer patient Abigail Burroughs and the case of Abigail Alliance v. von Eschenbach (2008), a suit against the FDA brought by a patient advocacy group founded by Abigail’s father after her death. In this case, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit denied terminally ill patients the right to obtain investigational drugs prior to FDA approval. Using a test established by the Supreme Court in its physician-assisted suicide decision, Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), the DC Circuit held that a right to access unapproved drugs is not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” The Introduction asserts that the Abigail Alliance court’s version of history was incomplete and one-dimensional, as the rest of the book will demonstrate.

scholarly journals EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF UBUNTU IN RELATION TO DYING WITH DIGNITY IN PALLIATIVE AND HOSPICE CARE

Obiter ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ntokozo Mnyandu
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Hospice Care ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Dying With Dignity ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Right ◽  
Hospice And Palliative Care ◽  
Court Of Appeal

The Supreme Court of Appeal in Minister of Justice and Correctional Services v Estate Stransham-Ford raised more questions than the answers it provided. However, of note is the enquiry it made regarding the implications of palliative care in relation to whether the criminality of physician-assisted suicide and physician- administered euthanasia infringes a person’s dignity. In response, this paper aims to reconstruct – through the lens of Ubuntu – our understanding of human dignity and draw links with how the values of compassion and survival, which underpin Ubuntu, enjoin us as a re-affirmation of human dignity, to strive towards making hospice and palliative care readily available. Ultimately, this is done for the benefit of providing constitutionally sound reasons for why greater emphasis should be placed on palliative and hospice care when it comes to dying with dignity. To this effect, a conceptual framework of human dignity that is based on Ubuntu is summarised. This is done for the purpose of properly aligning the understanding of the right to dignity to one that represents our constitutional dispensation and ethos. Flowing from this is an extract of the values of compassion and survival that underpin Ubuntu. These values are then used to gain a lucid perspective, as to why – in our pursuit of providing a dignified death for terminally ill patients – greater emphasis should be placed on hospice and palliative care.

scholarly journals IS THE RIGHT TO DIE WITH DIGNITY CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED? BAXTER V MONTANA* AND OTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN PATIENT AUTONOMY AND PHYSICIAN ASSISTED SUICIDE

Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suhayfa Bhamjee
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Patient Autonomy ◽  
Voluntary Euthanasia ◽  
Right To Die ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Right

This article examines the question of whether the right to life encompasses the right to die with dignity. It looks at the concepts of autonomy and paternalism as they exist as major themes on either side of the debate. Physician Assisted Suicide (Voluntary Euthanasia) has come under the spotlight in several jurisdictions, not just our own. Most recently in Montana, USA, the issue came before the Supreme Court for deliberation. The states of Washington and Oregon have legislations specific to PAS, legitimizing assisted suicide and removing wrongfulness from the actions of a physician who assists in the prescribed manner. Montana does not have specific legislation, but instead relied on the clauses of its Constitution, and it was held that the right to die with dignity is constitutionally guaranteed in that state. Here, argument is made suggesting that the right to die with dignity, in other words, to seek and easy passing through PAS, is also guaranteed in our Constitution.

Terminal Sedation: Palliative Care for Intractable Pain, Post Glucksberg and Quill

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-76
Author(s):  
Rob McStay
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Intractable Pain ◽  
Terminal Sedation ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
The Right ◽  
Artificial Life Support ◽  
Unconscious State

In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court tacitly endorsed terminal sedation as an alternative to physician-assisted suicide, thus intensifying a debate in the legal and medical communities as to the propriety of terminal sedation and setting the stage for a new battleground in the “right to die” controversy. Terminal sedation is the induction of an unconscious state to relieve otherwise intractable distress, and is frequently accompanied by the withdrawal of any life-sustaining intervention, such as hydration and nutrition. This practice is a clinical option of “last resort” when less aggressive palliative care measures have failed. Terminal sedation has also been described as “the compromise in the furor over physician-assisted suicide.”Medical literature suggests that terminal sedation was a palliative care option long before the Supreme Court considered the constitutional implications of physician-assisted suicide. Terminal sedation has been used for three related but distinct purposes: (1) to relieve physical pain; (2) to produce an unconscious state before the withdrawal of artificial life support; and (3) to relieve non-physical suffering.

Constitutional Law in 1942–1943: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1942

1944 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-288
Author(s):  
Robert E. Cushman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
West Coast ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Circuit Court ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Right

On February 15, 1943, Wiley B. Rutledge, Jr., a judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, took the seat on the Supreme Court vacated by the resignation in October, 1942, of Mr. Justice Byrnes. There were no other changes in the Court's personnel. Disagreement among the justices abated somewhat. In only a dozen cases of importance did either four or three justices dissent, as against some thirty cases in the last term. The Court overruled two earlier decisions, both recent; and the reversal in each case was made possible by the vote of Mr. Justice Rutledge.A. QUESTIONS OF NATIONAL POWER1. WAR POWER-CIVIL VERSUS MILITARY AUTHORITYWest Coast Curfew Applied to Japanese-American Citizens. In February, 1942, the President issued Executive Order No. 9066, which authorized the creation of military areas from which any or all persons might be excluded and with respect to which the right of persons to enter, remain in, or leave should be subject to such regulations as the military authorities might prescribe. On March 2, the entire West Coast to an average depth of forty miles was set up as Military Area No. 1 by the Commanding General in that area, and the intention was announced to evacuate from it persons of suspected loyalty, alien enemies, and all persons, aliens and citizens alike, of Japanese ancestry.

scholarly journals Euthanasia and suicide: a medical and social discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-112
Author(s):  
V. N. Ostapenko ◽  
I. V. Lantukh ◽  
A. P. Lantukh
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Adequate Quality ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Strong Explosion ◽  
The Right

Annotation. The problem of suicide and euthanasia has been particularly updated with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a strong explosion of suicide, because medicine was not ready for it, and the man was too weak in front of its pressure. The article considers the issue of euthanasia and suicide based on philosophical messages from the position of a doctor, which today goes beyond medicine and medical ethics and becomes one of the important aspects of society. Medicine has achieved success in the continuation of human life, but it is unable to ensure the quality of life of those who are forced to continue it. In these circumstances, the admission of suicide or euthanasia pursues the refusal of the subject to achieve an adequate quality of life; an end to suffering for those who find their lives unacceptable. The reasoning that banned suicide: no one should harm or destroy the basic virtues of human nature; deliberate suicide is an attempt to harm a person or destroy human life; no one should kill himself. The criterion may be that suicide should not take place when it is committed at the request of the subject when he devalues his own life. According to supporters of euthanasia, in the conditions of the progress of modern science, many come to the erroneous opinion that medicine can have total control over human life and death. But people have the right to determine the end of their lives while using the achievements of medicine, as well as the right to demand an extension of life with the help of the same medicine. They believe that in the era of a civilized state, the right to die with medical help should be as natural as the right to receive medical care. At the same time, the patient cannot demand death as a solution to the problem, even if all means of relieving him from suffering have been exhausted. In defense of his claims, he turns to the principle of beneficence. The task of medicine is to alleviate the suffering of the patient. But if physician-assisted suicide and active euthanasia become part of health care, theoretical and practical medicine will be deprived of advances in palliative and supportive therapies. Lack of adequate palliative care is a medical, ethical, psychological, and social problem that needs to be addressed before resorting to such radical methods as legalizing euthanasia.

EUTHANASIA: AIMING TO KILL WITH A COUNTER FULL OF OPTIONS?

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-14
Author(s):  
Tusharindra Lal ◽  
Riya Kataria ◽  
Priyadarshee Pradhan
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Medical Practitioner ◽  
Passive Euthanasia ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Patient’S Autonomy ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The World ◽  
Meaningful Existence ◽  
The Right ◽  
Active And Passive Euthanasia

Euthanasia or assisted suicide has been a matter of contention for many years with various types of euthanasia including voluntary, non-voluntary, involuntary, active and passive euthanasia being argued for around the world. This article highlights the types of euthanasia while analyzing the ethical, legal, economical and spiritual dilemmas surrounding them. It also compares euthanasia laws of countries around the world with the Indian stand taken by the Supreme Court in legalizing passive euthanasia. There exists a ne line between life and death. It is the duty of a medical practitioner to assess these situations critically while preserving a patient's autonomy. To deny a person the right to end their life with dignity is equivalent to depriving them of a meaningful existence.

Szasz, suicide, and medical ethics

Thomas Szasz ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 55-64
Author(s):  
George J. Annas
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
Suicide Prevention ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right ◽  
Suicidal Patients ◽  
Commit Suicide

Szasz objected to the medicalization of suicide, the legalization of suicide prevention, and especially the coercive role of psychiatry in this realm. He declared that, by medicalizing suicide, we banish the subject from discussion. What is meant by acceptable and unacceptable “suicide”? Who has a right to commit suicide? How does suicide implicate freedom? Does it reflect abortion jurisprudence? How do psychiatrists become suicide’s gatekeepers? Current phenomena (e.g., new physician-assisted suicide legislation) illuminate these and other issues (e.g., euthanasia, informed consent, informed refusal, the “right to die,”), all suggesting how Szasz would react to each. Suicide is legal, but is almost always considered a result of mental illness. Courts approve psychiatrists who want to commit “suicidal” patients involuntarily. Granting physicians prospective legal immunity for prescribing lethal drugs is, at best, a strange and tangential reaction to our inability to discuss suicide (and dying) rationally. Szasz got it right.

Reformed Theology and Conscientious Refusal of Medical Treatment

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Groenhout
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Appropriate Care ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
The Right

Abstract Traditionally, healthcare workers have had the right to refuse to participate in abortions or physician-assisted suicide, but more recently there has been a movement in white Evangelical circles to expand these rights to include the refusal of any treatment at all to same-sex couples or their children, transgender individuals, or others who offend the provider’s moral sensibilities. Religious freedom of conscience exists in an uneasy tension with laws protecting equal rights in a liberal polity, and it is a particularly fraught question in the context of medicine, where providers’ consciences must be balanced against patients’ rights to access appropriate care. This article examines the refusal of care to classes of people, usually classes defined by various sexual issues with which the caregivers disagree. This expands conscientious refusals from the traditional concept of responses to actions and instead directs it at specific types of people. The article draws on Reformed thought to argue that such refusals are not justified and are, in fact, both a profound misreading of Christian morality and a new and dangerously expansive account of the right to conscientious refusal in medicine.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document