About three-quarters of the respondents in recent Gallup and other polls conducted in the U.S., Britain, Holland, France, and Scandinavia favor active euthanasia for irreversibly comatose patients, even when death is not imminent. After the Conroy case in New Jersey (1985), a Gallup poll found that 81 percent of Americans approved of stopping treatment so that the patient could die. There was no significant difference between Catholics (77 percent) and Protestants (80 percent). A Roper poll found 52 percent in favor of doctors being allowed by law to end a patient's life if the patient requests it.
2.
FletcherJ, Morals and medicine, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954, esp. pp. 172–210.
3.
This is the position, in the U.S., of the Society for the Right to Die, Inc., and Concern for Dying (formerly the Euthanasia Education Council). The Hemlock Society, alone among “right to die” societies in America, straightforwardly advocates active euthanasia, although restricted to terminal patients—a dubious category, as we shall see.
4.
For a full account historically, see HumphryDWickettA, The right to die: Understanding euthanasia, New York: Harper and Row, 1986.
5.
Patricia Brophy v. New England Sinai Hospital, Inc., No. 399, Mass. 417, 497 N.E.2d 626 (1986).
6.
Among other cases, the justices listed In re Colyer, 99 Wash. 2d 114, 660 P.2d 738 (1983), overruled in part; In re Guardianship of Hamlin, 102 Wash. 2d 810, 689, 1732 (1984); In re Conroy, 98 N.J. 321, 486 A.2d 1209 (1985); Bartling v. Sup. Ct., 163 Cal. App. 3d 186, 209 Cal. Rptr. 220 (Ct. App. 1984); Bouvia v. Sup. Ct. (Glenshur), 179 Cal. App. 3d 1127, 225 Cal. Rptr. 297 (Ct. App. 1986), review denied (Cal., June 5, 1986).
7.
In re Rodas, No. 86PR139 (Colo. Dist. Ct. Mesa Co., Jan. 22, 1987) (Buss, J.).
8.
Colyer, supra note 6.
9.
See Brophy, supra note 5.
10.
Rasmussen v. Fleming, No. CA-86-0450-PR, Arizona Supreme Court, en banc (July 23, 1987).
11.
CantorNL, Legal frontiers of death and dying, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987, esp. pp. 45–51.
A recent symposium came close to a candid statement that forgoing treatment is suicide, but only by implication. In its index (but only there), it uses the term “suicide” to cover foregoing treatment. See LynnJ, ed., By no extraordinary means, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986: 202–12.
15.
See Fletcher, supra note 2, at 176.
16.
A physician said to me recently (in a typical instance of simplistic definition): “Euthanasia is directly ending a patient's life by a lethal dose or injection. Stopping treatment is not euthanasia because it doesn't directly cause death.” For a critical examination of such thinking by a philosopher, see RachelsJ, The end of life: Euthanasia and morality, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, esp. pp. 106–50.
17.
Both the eminent neurologist Ronald Cranford, M.D., and the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research (in Deciding to Forego Life-Sustaining Treatment, U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1983) have suggested the use of a more comprehensive term, “permanently unconscious,” for all subgroups of irremedial unawareness.
18.
DickeyNW, Withholding or withdrawing treatment, Journal of the American Medical Association1986, 256: 471.
19.
See the medical testimony in Rasmussen v. Fleming, supra note 10.
20.
Hazelton [sic] v. Powhatan Nursing Home, Inc., No. CH 98287 (Va. Cir. Ct., Fairfax Co., Aug. 29, 1986), order signed Sept. 2, 1986 (FortkortJ), appeal denied. Record No. 860814 (Va. Sept. 2, 1986).
21.
See a seminal but provocative discussion of this question in AnnasG, Transferring the hot potato, Hastings Center Report1987, 17(1): 20–21. The court in In re Jobes, No. C4971 85E (N.J. Super. Ct. Ch. Div., Morris Co., April 23, 1986), for example, held that a nursing home was entitled to refuse to honor a patient's request.
22.
In re Requena, 213 N.J. Super. 475, 517 A.2d 886 (Super. Ct., Ch. Div.), Morris Co., P. 326 88E, N.J., aff'd, 213 N.J. Super. 443, 517 A.2d 869 (Super Ct. App. Div., 1986), per curiam.
23.
WolfSM, At the Center: Reaching judges, Hastings Center Report1987, 17(3): Inside front cover.
