Issues in Law & Medicine articles from March 1991

Issues in Law & Medicine archives from March 1991

Medical treatment for older persons and persons with disabilities: 1990 developments. (article prepared by the staff of the National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent & Disabled Inc.)
March 22, 1991... Introduction Courts and legislatures continue to grapple with issues affecting the lives and well-being of persons with disabilities. These decisions have been traditionally made with little input from the very persons they directly...

Consciousness, coma, and the vegetative state: physical basis and definitional character.
March 22, 1991... Coma is a common event. In the United States alone, there are more than one thousand persons daily who sustain a cardiac arrest. (1) Eighty percent of those successfully resuscitated are comatose at one hour. (2) Yet cardiac arrest is only...

Can people who are unconscious or in the 'vegetative state' perceive pain.
March 22, 1991... "The problem of pain," as C.S. Lewis described it, is one posed by the evolution or appearance of man on planet earth. (1) Man is a being possessed of mind, of consciousness, and of soul--qualities or entities beyond the limits of this...

Is a decision to forgo tube feeding for another a decision to kill?
March 22, 1991... Important moral discussions can degenerate into sloganeering, emotional hype, and name calling. But important moral discussions require patience, careful reasoning, and insight into a particular case where principles, norms, and virtues are...