The COVID-19 Pandemic Highlights the Necessity of Advance Care Planning
The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the importance of clearly expressing personal wishes for medical care in emergency situations.
End-of-life Care
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Read more: COVID-19 Underscores Racial Disparity in Advance Directives COVID-19 Underscores Racial Disparity in Advance Directives
In the COVID-19 pandemic, health care providers must work to ensure parity in conversations about end-of-life care and honoring patients’ wishes.
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Read more: The End of Dramatic Legal Saga: French Patient Vincent Lambert has Died The End of Dramatic Legal Saga: French Patient Vincent Lambert has Died
By Audrey Lebret There are few cases as publicized in France as the story of Vincent Lambert, a patient in a vegetative state whose fate deeply divided his family. On June 28, 2019, the Cour de Cassation signed the last substantial decision of the Vincent Lambert case, after six years of proceedings. The patient died…
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Read more: Book Review: Phyllis Shacter’s “Choosing to Die” (A Story of Death by Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking) Book Review: Phyllis Shacter’s “Choosing to Die” (A Story of Death by Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking)
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 would pose a repugnant physical and emotional burden upon caregivers. They know that lingering in an utterly dysfunctional cognitive state…
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Read more: American Psychiatric Association Releases Formal Position Statement on Euthanasia American Psychiatric Association Releases Formal Position Statement on Euthanasia
By Wendy S. Salkin Last month, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) released a position statement on medical euthanasia. The statement, approved by the APA Assembly in November and approved by the Board of Trustees in December, states: The American Psychiatric Association, in concert with the American Medical Association’s position on medical euthanasia, holds that a psychiatrist should…
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Read more: Marking the 40th Anniversary of In re Quinlan’s Landmark Contribution to Death & Dying Jurisprudence Marking the 40th Anniversary of In re Quinlan’s Landmark Contribution to Death & Dying Jurisprudence
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…