PEDIATRICS Vol. 81 No. 2 February 1988, pp. 317-321
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Right to Refuse Life-Sustaining Treatment

RASA GUSTAITIS MS1

1 San Francisco

Recent judicial actions expanding individual rights to refuse life-prolonging medical intervention serve to call attention to the absence of similar development regarding severely damaged, critically ill newborns. Whereas courts have provided guidelines that will allow adults to choose death when hope for meaningful life is lost, hopelessly ill infants continue to be treated aggressively, even in violation of their physicians' reasonable judgment and parental choice.

Significant rulings that allow adults to refuse life-supporting treatment grow from the same perception as gives rise to the ethical dilemmas posed by severely damaged newborns: that it is inhumane, indeed morally indefensible, to prolong life when "the burden of maintaining a corporeal existence degrades the very humanity it was meant to serve" (The New York Times, Sept 12, 1986, p A10).




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