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 — risks a premature demise while still enjoying a tolerable lifestyle. The question arises whether an alternative tactic — an advance…
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 right to obtain a lethal prescription has gotten short shrift. Even when the dying patient’s claim for physician assistance in dying…
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, 2017 WL 3897181 (9/17/17). The lawsuit was filed by several terminally ill patients (and physicians serving such patients) challenging New York’s…
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 parents had been allowed “no control” over their child’s life and death. Demonstrators, calling themselves “Charlie’s army,” assembled near the courthouse crying “shame” at…
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 would pose a repugnant physical and emotional burden upon caregivers. They know that lingering in an utterly dysfunctional cognitive state can continue for many…
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 the end stage of a fatal affliction. The contemporaneous legislation endorsing advance directives was typically geared to “terminal illness” (meaning…
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 a point where the immediate or prospective ordeal has become personally intolerable. The stricken person decides to shorten the ordeal…
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 reject dialysis, and a person with a swallowing disorder can reject artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH). State and federal courts…
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 death & dying jurisprudence. Its impact is reminiscent of the judicial role played by Brown v. Board of Education in…
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. For me, such mental debilitation soils the remembrances to be left with my survivors and undermines the life narrative as…
