Examination on Discovery of “Death at a New York Hospital”: Searching for the Governing Values,Policies,and Attitudes

Somerville M. A. , Refusal of Medical Treatment in “Captive” Circumstances, Canadian Bar Review 63(1): 59 (March 1985).

Barber B. , Research on Human Subjects: Problems of Social Control in Medical Experimentation (Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1973), at 30.

Jonas H. , Philosophical Reflections on Experimenting with Human Subjects, Experimentation with Human Subjects (ed. Freund P. ) (Brazilier, New York, 1970), at 1.

A physician might refrain from saving a life that could be saved if, for example, the patient's religious beliefs lead him or her to refuse treatment.

Legal documents are usually perceived as instruments of cold, hard reality, needed because they govern relationships between strangers, not intimates (see C. Gilligan, New Maps of Development: New Visions of Maturity, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 52[2]: 199 [1982]; Toulmin S. , Equity and Principles, Osgoode Hall Law Journal 20[1]: 1 [March 1982]). Yet perhaps testamentary wills and marriage contracts could, ideally, also be characterized, like the living will and the durable power of attorney, as instruments of love and trust.