Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1979
ISSN
0098-8588
Publisher
Boston University School of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
One of the most perplexing problems in the medicolegal field concerns the criteria on which decisions not to treat terminally ill incompetent patients should be made. These decisions traditionally have been made by physicians in hospitals-sometimes with the assistance of the patient's family-on the basis of their perceptions of the patient's "best interests." Recently, two state supreme courts have ruled on this question. The New Jersey Supreme Court, in the Quinlan case, developed a medical prognosis criterion, and permitted the patient's guardian, family, and physicians to apply it with the concurrence of a hospital "ethics committee." The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in the Saikewicz case, adopted, on different facts, the test of "substituted judgment" to be applied by a probate court after an adjudicatory hearing. The two cases have been interpreted by many in the medical profession as representing conflicting viewpoints---one supportive of traditional medical decision making and the other distrustful of it.
Recommended Citation
George J. Annas,
Reconciling Quinlan and Saikewicz: Decision Making for the Terminally Ill Incompetent
,
in
4
American Journal of Law & Medicine
367
(1979).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1220
