Business Strategy Class, Group Assigned a Case

¶ … business strategy class, group assigned a case study. It a 12-20-page paper, responsibility write 4 pages, part write. Here teacher instruction: "A case study assigned group. Additionally a rubric showing material case study included.

Ethics: Euthanasia

Recently, a young woman dying of brain cancer in Queens was forced to engage in a legal struggle with her own parents to 'win' the 'right to die. "Paralyzed from the waist down, the 28-year-old woman won court approval last week to be taken off life support, a move challenged by her devout Christian parents who claimed that would be tantamount to suicide and would be a sin that would send their daughter to hell. After winning the right to die, Grace changed her mind. Her lawyer, David Smith, said she made the decision out of love for her parents and to alleviate their suffering" (Scott 2012). This case illustrates how right-to-die cases can tear families apart. Grace Lee was not estranged from her family, but after she became terminally ill, her views came into conflict with those of her religious parents. Lee and her attorney argued that she was mentally competent; her father said that given the fact Lee was so religious before she became ill, she could not be in her right mind when she asked to be withdrawn from life support.

Eventually, the Lee family reached a compromise: Lee would be allowed to make her own medical decisions until deemed incompetent (Lee is said to only have a few weeks or months to live) and then the power of attorney would shift to her father. But not all debates end so easily within families. The most famous or infamous right-to-die case of recent note was that of Terry Schiavo. "Ms. Schiavo had been sustained by artificial hydration and nutrition through a feeding tube for 15 years, and her husband, Michael Schiavo, was locked in a very public legal struggle with her parents and siblings about whether such treatment should be continued or stopped" (Quill 2005). Schiavo had been classified as 'brain dead' by outside neurologists and other independent sources; members of her immediate family saw the matter differently and believed against all medical evidence there was hope.

Terry Schiavo's blood family members argued that Terry would have wanted to live and that Michael Schiavo merely wanted to marry another woman and move on with his life. Michael argued that although Terry had left no written living will, he had discussed the matter with her and she had expressed her desire not to be sustained with heroic means. Eventually, the case became a media 'feeding frenzy' and although the courts decided in favor of Schiavo's husband, In the absence of a living will, the patient's "closest family members" must "try to understand what she would have wanted under these medical circumstances if she could have spoken for herself, drawing on the principle of 'substituted judgment.' Some families unite around this question, especially when there is a shared vision of the patient's views and values. Other families unravel, their crisis aggravated by genuine differences of opinion about the proper course of action or preexisting fault lines arising from long-standing family dynamics" (Quill 2005).

It is easy to see why euthanasia is such a contentious issue in the field of medicine. "Euthanasia raises a number of agonizing moral dilemmas: is it ever right to end the life of a terminally ill patient who is undergoing severe pain and suffering? Under what circumstances can euthanasia be justifiable, if at all? Is there a moral difference between killing someone and letting them die?" ("Euthanasia," BBC News, 2012). There are no easy answers to these philosophical questions and the laws regarding euthanasia are not consistent in the major industrialized nations and also very from state to state.

In the United States, despite its emphasis on individual autonomy in the law, while "the competent terminally ill patient has the right to make a legally binding advanced directive in anticipation of inability to choose withdrawal of treatment (for example gastrostomy tubes)," he or she is "not permitted to hasten death by means of additional medication given with physician advice and/or assistance in the final stages of illness" (Fraser & Walters 2000). Thus, the idea that sins of omission are worse than sins of commission seems to be enshrined in the law. The patient can refuse heroic means to keep him or herself alive, but not deliberately hasten death.

However, there is a gray area as to what constitutes hastening death. For patients undergoing hospice care, physicians will often observe what is called the 'doctrine of double effect.' The administration of morphine may hasten the patient's death, but does not directly cause the death, and by making the patient's final days more comfortable, the physician is considered to be 'doing good' ("Euthanasia," BBC News, 2012). Issues of euthanasia are often viewed along more of a continuum, rather than in terms of black-and-white. While there are extremes on both sides -- some people have suggested that chronically depressed patients have a 'right' to take their lives, while others, like Grace Lee's religious parents, believe that heroic measures must be sustained indefinitely because only God can take life -- the courts and the dominant beliefs amongst ordinary citizens and ethicists fall somewhere along the middle. This ever-shifting ethical line is why legal consensus is so difficult.