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By Norman L. Cantor The scourge of Alzheimer’s is daunting. For me, the specter of being mired in progressively degenerative dementia is an intolerably degrading prospect. One avoidance tactic — suicide while still competent —…
By Norman L. Cantor Since 1997, when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected federal constitutional challenges to New York and Washington prohibitions of assistance to suicide, the notion that a dying patient might have a constitutional…
By Norman L. Cantor Justice Cardozo, the legendary jurist from New York, would turn over in his grave upon reading the New York Court of Appeals’ per curiam (unsigned) opinion in Myers v. Schneiderman,…
By Norman L. Cantor The judicial decision to allow mechanical life support to be removed from the British infant, Charlie Gard, has been roundly condemned by some sources. The infant’s distraught mother lamented that the…
By Norman L. Cantor For some people, being mired in progressively degenerative dementia is an intolerably distasteful prospect. Precipitous mental deterioration would, for them, indelibly soil the lifetime image to be left with survivors and…
By Norman L. Cantor In the early days of living wills — the 1970’s and 1980’s – a major objective was to avoid being maintained on burdensome medical machinery in a highly debilitated status at…
By Norman L. Cantor The right of a grievously stricken, competent patient to hasten death by ceasing eating and drinking is increasingly recognized. In the typical scenario, a person afflicted with a serious degenerative disease reaches…
By Norman L. Cantor A stricken medical patient has a well-established right to reject life-extending medical interventions. A person afflicted with pulmonary disease is entitled to reject a respirator, a person with kidney dysfunction can…
By Norman L. Cantor In 1976, the N.J. Supreme Court issued a remarkably insightful ruling regarding the legal status of a permanently unconscious patient. In re Quinlan served as a judicial beacon guiding development of…
By Norman L. Cantor I am obsessed with avoiding severe dementia. As a person who has always valued intellectual function, the prospect of lingering in a dysfunctional cognitive state is distasteful — an intolerable indignity.…
