Briefing a Case
Case Name: Schindler v. Schiavo
• Who is the plaintiff? The defendant?
The plaintiffs are Robert Schindler and Mary Schindler. The defendant is Michael Schiavo.
• What is the issue?
Mr. Schiavo obtained permission to stop his wife’s life sustaining treatment after many years in a vegetative state. Her parents, however, are fighting to continue to keep their daughter alive and ultimately obtain guardianship over their daughter (Fla. App. 2001).
• What court is this in?
Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District
• What’s happened before? What are the facts?
Mr. Schiavo petitioned the guardianship court to determine if his wife should be removed from life sustaining treatment. The court ordered that his wife’s feeding tube should be removed. His wife’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Schindler immediately sought an injunction to replace the feeding tube until their appeal could be heard. Mr. and Mrs. Schindler claimed to have new evidence that Mr. Schiavo lied to the court about knowing his wife’s wishes under these circumstances. Mr. and Mrs. Schindler are also suing for guardianship rights over their daughter so that they can make future medical decisions on her behalf (Fla. App. 2001).
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The court held that Mr. Schiavo has the right to make medical decisions for his wife. He will be allowed to discontinue life sustaining treatment. The court did not find that Mr. and Mrs. Schindler presented enough evidence to continue the life sustaining treatment. However, the court granted the parents an expedited appeal process, given the time sensitive nature of the situation, should they wish to pursue (Fla. App.
Emilio is terminally ill and is under the care of the Children’s Hospital in Texas. He is placed on life support by a respirator and is given pills causing the child to spend majority of his time in the pediatric intensive care unit unconscious. Showing no signs of improvement, the physician has requested the parents look for another hospital willing to continue aiding Emilio within a period of 10 days. Under the Texas “futile-care” law, the hospital’s ethics committee can, “declare the care of a terminally ill patient to be of no benefit,” allowing them to terminate care after a given time period. (Moreno, Sylvia. Case Puts Futile-Treatment Law Under a Microscope.
While the case was in the state of Washington, it was seen in the plaintiff's favor: Dr. Harold Glucksberg and Compassion In Dying. Because of this the state laws changed in support of doctor-assisted suicide. The state of Washington still opposed the idea of this so they ordered an appeal.
There are many ethical paradigms through which humans find guidance and justification for their own actions. In the case of contractarianism, citizens of a state are entitled to human rights, considered to be unalienable, and legal rights, which are both protected by the state. As Spinello says, “The problem with most rights-based theories is that they do not provide adequate criteria for resolving practical disputes when rights are in conflict” (14). One case that supports Spinello is the case of Marlise Munoz, a brain-dead pregnant thirty-three year old, who was wrongly kept on life support for nearly two months at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. Misinterpretation of the Texas Advance Directives Act by John Peter Smith Hospital led to the violation of the contractarian paradigm. Although the hospital was following the directive in order to maintain legal immunity for its hospital staff, the rights of the family were violated along with the medical fundamental principle to “first, do no harm.”
How it relates to healthcare: The child’s injuries proved severe, and Bedner faced a long prison sentence if convicted,but he didn’t face murder charges.As his critically ill daughter,C.B. remained on life support the hospital sought to exclude Bender from decisions regarding from life support. The girl eventually did die, but the case generated considerable public debate and stimulated a controversy among bioethics scholars .
In February of 1990 a woman named Terri Schiavo collapsed at home suffering cardiac arrest in her home in St. Petersburg, Florida. She was resuscitated but had severe brain damage because she had no oxygen going to her brain for several minutes. Terri was severely brain damaged and in a vegetative state but could still breathe and maintain a heart beat on her own. After two and a half months and no signs of improvement, impaired vision, and the inability to move her arms and legs she needed a feeding tube to sustain her life since she seemed to be in a persistent vegetative state. For 2 years doctors attempted speech and physical therapy with no success. In 1998 Schiavos husband claimed she would not want to live in that quality of life without a prospect of recovery so he tried several times over the course of many years to pull the feeding tube so she could pass. Bob and Mary Schindler challenged and fought for a
Terry Shiavo was a young female, who became sick after she had an accident in which left her brain dead for the rest of her life. Her husband, Michael Shiavo was her caretaker and was later appointed as her legal guardian on June 18, 1990. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/schiavo/). This was a struggle for Mr. Shiavo, as it would have been for me and many others. From this point on, Mr. Shiavo knew that he had a hard and long struggle dealing with the fact that his wife, whom he loved, is now brain dead, and he is the one left to care for her and make medical decision on her behalf. Her family was there for her also, and this is how all of this became a problem between Mr. Shiavo, and Terry's' parents Mr. and Mrs. Schindler.
Throughout the duration of their lives, the Lacks family never received any monetary compensation for the use of their family member’s cells and were unable to even afford health insurance (p. 168). The ethical standards that apply to this dilemma are: Integrity (1.04), Exploitative Relationships (1.07, a), Contracts, Fees, and Financial Arrangements (2.12), Accuracy in Billing Reports (2.13), Acknowledging
In the Chicago Tribune it stated that some supporters of the Schindlers has doubts of Mr. Schiavo ethics and his fitness for guardianship of Terri. They bought forward affidavits from his former girlfriends saying that they swore he confided in them stating he had no idea what his wife’s end-of-life wishes were. Also former care-givers of Terri stated that Mr. Schiavo was abusive to the home nursing staff and expressed the wish that Terri was dead. I feel this evidence is enough to put the feeding tube back in. To have so many people contest want Mr. Schiavo was saying and to just have the courts ignore it over and over again, I feel is unconstitutional.
The mother-son case illustrates that there are more factors in play than just the two that Thomson presents in her thesis. Thomson’s conditions by themselves cannot explain every situation. The relationship between the people involved can also affect whether a decision is morally permissible or not. If that relationship entails that one person is emotionally bound and ethically responsible for the security and well-being of the other, the first cannot knowingly contribute to the death of the second. Thomson’s thesis must be modified to include this condition as well.
In an effort to provide the standard of care for such a patient the treating physicians placed Ms. Quinlan on mechanical ventilation preserving her basic life function. Ms. Quinlan’s condition persisted in a vegetative state for an extended period of time creating the ethical dilemma of quality of life, the right to choose, the right to privacy, and the end of life decision. The Quilan family believed they had their daughter’s best interests and her own personal wishes with regard to end of life treatment. The case became complicated with regard to Karen’s long-term care from the perspective of the attending physicians, the medical community, the legal community local/state/federal case law and the catholic hospital tenants. The attending physicians believed their obligation was to preserve life but feared legal action both criminal and malpractice if they instituted end of life procedures. There was prior case law to provide guidance for legal resolution of this case. The catholic hospital in New Jersey, St. Clare’s, and Vatican stated this was going down a slippery slope to legalization of euthanasia. The case continued for 11 years and 2 months with gaining national attention. The resolution was obtained following Karen’s father being granted guardianship and ultimately made decisions on Karen’s behalf regarding future medical
Reich, Warren T. “The Care-Based Ethic of Nazi Medicine and the Moral Importance of What We Care About”. American Journal of Bioethics 1.1 (2001): 64-74. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.
The case of Nancy Cruzan has become one of the landmark cases for withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration because of important ethical issues the case brings to light. At the time of the case, the United States Supreme Court had already established the right of an individual to refuse medical treatment. This issue therefore is not novel to the Cruzan case. Furthermore, there was not any controversy over who was the appropriate decision maker for Nancy Cruzan. The significant issue that the Cruzan case did bring to the table of medical ethics regarded whether or not a substituted decision make could choose to withdraw artificial hydration and nutrition on behalf of another individual.
With the guidance of their physician, Baby Does’ parents chose to withhold medical care and surgery due to the conclusion still leaving the child with severe retardation. “Officials at the hospital had the Indiana Juvenile Courts appoint a guardian to determine whether or not to perform the surgery. The court finally ruled in favor of the parents and upheld their right to informed medical decision” (Resnik, 2011). Because of the decision made to withhold surgery and medical care, Baby Doe died five days later of dehydration and pneumonia.
Christina Robbins awakens screaming as she clinches the railing of her hospital bed while excruciating pain radiates through her weakened body. Christina’s husband and two teenage daughters sit on the couch in the corner of her dimmed hospital room. In just three months, Christina went from a completely healthy lawyer to lying in her deathbed needing 24 hour care. The cancer has now spread from her lungs throughout her body and within days would reach her brain. The doctors have tried to keep Christina’s pain under control, but with all the medicine the slightest touch feels like razor blades scraping her skin. Being a terminal patient is rather difficult to come to terms with, leaving unpaid bills behind, losing bodily control, and having family watch them die a slow painful death. Incidentally Christiana does not live in one of the four states that offer Physician Assisted Suicide. Physician Assisted Suicide should be legalized in all states because it is a freedom of choice, ceases one’s pain and suffering and decreases traditional suicide rates.
...t’s family should be able decide for the patient whether or not prolonging their life is moral.