Many patients' lives at risk California Supreme Court to Decide Fate of Robert Wendland.

Within the next few months the California Supreme Court will come down with a fateful decision in the case of Robert Wendland, the disabled California man who has been the focus of a protracted court battle over his wife's insistence that doctors withdraw his food and fluids.

Wendland, although severely brain damaged since a 1993 car accident, is conscious and can sometimes respond to his environment. He cannot talk or walk and requires a feeding tube to provide life-sustaining nutrition and hydration.

Disability rights advocates worry that if his nourishment is withdrawn, it could easily unleash a widespread pattern of withdrawal well beyond those currently most at risk: people diagnosed as being terminally ill or in a so-called "persistent vegetative state" (PVS).

Wendland's mother and sister have resolutely led the fight against withdrawal of his feeding tube. They brought the case to the California Supreme Court after the state Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Rose Wendland, Robert's wife and legal conservator. On February 24, 2000, the appeals court said that California law -- known as section 2355 -- allows guardians to make life-ending decisions as long as they act in "good faith" based on medical advice.

The justices stated that section 2355 applies "to a conservator's decision to withhold life-sustaining nutrition/hydration from a conservatee who has been adjudicated to lack capacity to make his own decision, but who is not terminally ill or PVS."

Thus the appeals court added its imprimatur to the relentless campaign to make it possible to withdraw food and fluids from a wider and wider circle of people with disabilities. This alarming drive is grounded in a new standard for making these life and death decisions.

For example, the appeals court decision would not allow courts to independently evaluate the expressed wishes of the patient before the disability was incurred or even the best interests of the patient, as long as the guardian has said he/she has taken them into consideration. "[T]he court is merely to satisfy itself that the conservator has considered the conservatee's best interest," the appeals court wrote.