Ethical Issues in End-of-Life Decisions

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They were the subjects of public disputes with family members, court systems, medical professionals, the media, and society at large. Terri Schiavo, Nancy Cruzan and Karen Ann Quinlan; their names are synonymous with permanent vegetative state (PVS). The amazing technological advancements in modern medicine has been credited with keeping persons alive who in times past would have died, therefore this is remarkable for countless families. In the cases of the Quinlan’s, the Cruzan’s and many like them, families members find it unbearable to witness loved ones who linger indefinitely in PVS with little or no chance for recovery. There are many like Terri Schiavo’s parents, who value the lives of their love ones no matter how limited their lives are. So the medical, legal and moral questions arise; should PVS patients be denied nutrition and hydration until they die? Patients living in PVS’s should be given every medical treatment available to increase their chances for recovery but rather they recover or not they are human beings and the limited life they have should be preserved and treated with dignity.

Terri Schiavo with her mother at the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida in 2005.

Permanent Vegetative State

Disorders of consciousness (DOC) refer to patients in comas, vegetative states (VS), locked-in-syndrome, and minimally conscious states. Characteristics of the vegetative state are arousal without awareness of self or environment. The persons can blink their eyes, smile, and make noises, but these functions are solely involuntary. “A “persistent vegetative state” is a vegetative state that remains one month after brain damage, which becomes a “permanent vegetative state” three months after non-traumatic brai...

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...Responding to Persons in a Persistent Vegetative State. Retrieved from

http://www.xenos.org/ministries/crossroads/donal/pvs.htm.

Rakestraw, R. (2004). The Persistent Vegetative State and the Withdrawal of Nutrition and

Hydration. Retrieved from http://http://people.bethel.edu/~rakrob/

Ronald Cranford. (2005). Facts, Lies, and Videotapes: The Permanent Vegetative State and the

Sad Case of Terri Schiavo. The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 33(2), 363-71.

Retrieved January 26, 2011, from Research Library. (Document ID: 860574831).

Sarà, M., & Pistoia, F. (2010). Defining Consciousness: Lessons from Patients and Modern

Techniques. Journal of Neurotrauma, 27(4), 771-3. Retrieved January 21, 2011, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2016803151).

Too Vigorously Assisted Suicide. (2005). National Review, 57(6), 14. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

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