¶ … right to terminate artificial life-Support system a practical condition on the successful practice of medicine?
Terminating artificial life support is often viewed as being qualitatively and ethically different from physician-assisted suicide or aid-in-dying. Withholding treatment is sometimes referred to as passive euthanasia (Steinbock, 2015). When in a fully cognizant, possibly healthy state of mind a patient had provided express written directives that artificial life support be withdrawn under certain specific conditions (also known as an advance directive), physicians may withdraw the life support if those conditions had been met.
Unfortunately, most cases of patients on life support are less clear-cut. The right to terminate artificial life support should not be one taken lightly, as insurers could too easily abuse their power by mandating the termination of life support in some situations in order to save money. On the other hand, terminating artificial life-support makes sense in cases like that of Terry Schiavo, for whom a full recovery was deemed practically impossible. Extending life support in cases like these only extends the emotional, mental, and psychological burdens faced by the family members. In situations where a patient is on artificial life support, the physician should be competent enough to determine whether or not recovery would be possible and if so, how possible.
The practice of medicine can still be considered "successful" even if a patient dies. A medical team may have done everything within its power to provide care, support, and intervention. Artificial life support is occasionally a temporary intervention, but when it becomes...
The author points out that the Ninth Circuit ignores in its rulings two established "distinctions." What are these distinctions and why ignoring them can have a significant impact on health care law and medical ethics?
The Ninth Circuit held that terminally ill patients deemed mentally competent should be able to make clear decisions regarding end of life. Furthermore, the Ninth Circuit found no ethical or legal distinction between a doctor prescribing a drug that was specifically designed to end a life (single-purpose medical interventions) and dual-purpose interventions. Dual-purpose interventions are those that "increase the risk of death or hasten its arrival as a byproduct of efforts to control pain," (Kasimar, 1997). Yet the distinction between these two methods is clear. In the case with single-purpose interventions, the doctor assumes full responsibility -- legal and otherwise -- for the death of the patient. The doctor cannot claim that the medication that killed a patient was prescribed for something else, and the patient had either accidentally or intentionally overdosed for the purposes of committing suicide, thereby abnegating responsibility. In the case with secondary effects, the doctor can be absolved of responsibility, which raises a host of moral and legal questions. As one of the authors points out in the discussion over assisted suicide, patients have indeed died without having any say in the matter because a doctor had prescribed medications without full consent (Kasimar, 1997). Therefore,…
