Comas: Karen Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, And Terri Schiavo

The chapter 3, Comas: Karen Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, and Terri Schiavo, introduces three new cases of patients facing a persistent vegetative state (PVS.) These cases discuss the ethical and political issues of keeping people in a vegetative state alive, being individuals who would never have a conscious life again. The first case began around the resolution of the Supreme Court of New Jersey about the removal of the ventilator to the PVS patient Karen Quinlan, in 1976. Her father waged a legal battle with the Supreme Court of New Jersey to have the right to disconnect the respirator that kept Karen alive, to which agreed with Quinlan's father. As Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan became a public case after being in an irreversible vegetative state. She was kept alive only through a feeding tube. Cruzan's family reached the Supreme Court of Justice of the United States to get the tube that fed her disconnected, which ruled that there was "no clear and convincing evidence" that Nancy did not want her life to be …show more content…
In this case, the third party is her husband, who was her guardian and took the decision of disconnect her from her feeding tube. In addition, due to the complexity of these cases, advanced directives took an important place. These are verbal or written instructions that communicate the wishes of the patient about their treatment, and how these must be fulfilled in case the individual is too sick or unable to make independent decisions. For example, even though Karen had not previously made any concrete manifestation as to what her wishes would be in her case, the court based its decision on the substituted trial. This means that the court did not rely on evidence about the patient's effective will, but resorted to a hypothetical